Kikuji Kawada

 is a Japanese photographer. He co-founded the Vivo photographic collective in 1959 with Akira Sato, Eikoh Hosoe, Ikko Narahara, Akira Tanno and Shomei Tomatsu. He was one of the fifteen artists selected for the “New Japanese Photography” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1974. He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Photographic Society of Japan in 2011.
Life and work.
Kawada's book "Chizu" ("The Map") has been praised by critics. Brett Rogers, director of The Photographers' Gallery, London, has said it is a "deeply moving and highly original investigation into a seminal moment in Japanese history." In "The Photobook: A History, Vol. 1", Martin Parr and Gerry Badger describe "Chizu" (The Map) as being amongst four books that "constitute photography's most significant memorials to the defining event in twentieth-century Japanese history" and that it is "the ultimate photobook-as-object, combining a typical Japanese attention to the art of refined packaging with hard-hitting photography, text and typography – a true photo-text piece. No photobook has been more successful in combining graphic design with complex photographic narrative." Sean O'Hagan, writing in "The Guardian", said it is "perhaps the most intricately designed and powerfully evocative Japanese photobook ever [ . . . ] By turns impressionistic and surreal, the book demands a degree of patient, silent contemplation that echoes the act of remembering."