Imai Hisae

Hisae Imai (1931–2009) was one of the artists at the forefront of Japanese photography in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s, he began photographing racehorses in Japan and overseas, pioneering their use as a photographic subject. In 1956, his first solo exhibition, Hakuchumu ("Daydream"), attracted attention for the surreal atmosphere of his color photographs. While Imai kept up with avant-garde photography movements such as Subjective Photography and VIVO, he established his own place in the world of photography through his poetic style in series such as Donkey, King and Myself and Ophelia. During a photography trip to Europe in 1970, Imai met the legendary racehorse Nijinsky in England and began a long career photographing racehorses around the world into the 2000s, becoming a pioneer of the genre. In 2010, he was posthumously awarded the Special Achievement Award by the Japan Racing Organization in recognition of his work.

*This text was contributed by Mitsuhiro Wakayama.
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