Kensuke Kazama

Kensuke Kazama (風間 健介, Kazama Kensuke, 18 September 1960 – June 2017) was a Japanese photographer who photographed the one-time mining town of Yūbari, Hokkaidō.

[1] Kazama's photographs of the town of Yūbari and its abandoned mines and mining paraphernalia are in black and white, and employ a medium-format camera for detail and small aperture for great depth of field,[2] often allied with a formal composition.

Mitsugu Ōnishi points out that the results "run counter to the ruins photography trend".

[1] Kazama later moved to Sayama (Saitama), where in 2010 he was working more with photograms, mounting both food specimens and potato crisps lightly edited to resemble faces in a specially constructed negative carrier and enlarging from this.

[7] In 2014 Kazama finally moved to Tateyama (Chiba), where he continued his photography.

Yubari, the work that won Kazama the Society of Photography Award and the PSJ newcomer's award in 2006.