Société IRF was an avant-garde art society founded by a group of Japanese artists and photographers based in the city of Fukuoka in 1939.
[1] Many of the founding members were photographers such as Wataru Takahashi, Zentoku Tanaka, Giichiro Konomi, and Hisashi Hisano but also included other artists such as Kenshi Ito, who was a painter, and Iwataro Koike, a craftsman.
In the years after the war many of the members moved to larger cities while others passed away making Société IRF one of the more short-lived avant-garde art groups.
Through these informal exchanges of ideas about art many other artists came together such as Koike and Ito eventually to form the core group which would go on to found the organization.
[4] Unlike other amateur photography clubs which flourished around Japan before WWII, Société IRF was notable because of its diverse membership which included artists from different fields.