Shoji Otake gained early recognition as a photographer while still of junior high school age winning awards at the Asahi Camera magazine photo contest. After entering school in Shangai in 1940, in 1944 he became a press photographer working with the military and the Japanese Embassy in Beijin. Scouted and employed in Japan by the occupation forces (GHQ), he spent the postwar period photographing s
ingers and actresses who visited Tokyo to perform at Ernie Pyle Theater as entertainment for American Troops stationed in Japan. Later he worked for the Tokyo bureau of Life magazine and for the INP international news photo service. In 1950 he went freelance and started producing independently many portraits of world renowned musicians, actresses and other celebrities, for Asahi Camera and later collected in the prestigious book ‘World Musicians’. Founding member of Nikakai Association of Photographers in 1953 and of the Gine Gruppe in 1956, his following works focused preeminently, but not only, on glamour and nudes, making of him the top photographer of women in Japan. Groundbreaking were in particular the artistic nudes of housewives, office ladies and families that were broadcasted with a dedicated program on Nippon Television from 1971 for as long as five years and later published as ‘Family Nudes’. With over two dozens of publications, countless written contributions as well as even more numerous covers on magazines, his works collected and displayed in a number of national museums, Otake Shoji marked a time not only as photographer, but also as TV screenwriter, essayist and celebrity in talk shows and radio programs, thanks to his multifaceted knowledge, interests and peculiar charisma. Active until well beyond the age of 90, after his passing on July 2015, his daughter Ayumi has accepted the demanding task of bringing on the photographic legacy of Shoji Otake by founding Shoji Otake Photography a company aimed expressly at preserving, reorganizing and publishing as widely as possible - particularly abroad - the value of the work and the vision of photographer Shoji Otake. This is the official page and the main communication channel of Shoji Otake Photography.
