Eastbeats: Osaka 1964 – 1970

As a young man who had just moved from the countryside to the metropolis of Osaka, Suzuki Yoshihiro started a new life as a company worker by treating himself to a Minolta SRI single-lens reflex camera. In his free time, he wandered around the city, spontaneously and curiously photographing the urban landscape, in settings ranging from boulevards to shopping arcades and from the business district to traditional backstreets. Suzuki refers to himself as an ”amateur photographer,“ and his story is representative of the strong amateur photography movement in post-war Japan, which is for the most part unknown to the public, unlike the work of professional photographers who have been exhibited worldwide. Suzuki’s early photographs came to light by pure coincidence: his son’s wife discovered the negatives and developed them as contact sheets. More than fifty years after Suzuki’s photographs were taken, they are now finally being published as a photobook.

Yoshihiro Suzuki, born 1941 in Ashiya (Japan), first took up photography around 1964. He lives in Osaka.

Yumi Son, born 1971 in Himeji (Japan), discovered the photo archive at her father-in-law’s house in Osaka. She lives in Berlin.