Masahisa Fukase
Masahisa Fukase (1934–2012) was a Japanese photographer known for his intimate pictures of family life and his famous book Karasu (Ravens), also called The Solitude of Ravens. He was born in Bifuka, Hokkaido, where his family ran a small photo studio. He moved to Tokyo in the 1950s for study and work but kept strong ties to his hometown.
In the 1960s and 70s he worked in different styles and published many photo essays. His first photobook, Yūgi (1971), shows life with his first wife Yukiyo Kawakami and his second wife Yōko Wanibe, but it does not show Fukase’s own face. Yōko (1978) followed, continuing his approach of telling his life through another person.
Karasu was made between 1976 and 1982 after his divorce from Yōko and during his marriage to writer Rika Mikanagi. The project uses ravens, bleak landscapes, and indirect self-portraits. It began as an eight-part series for Camera Mainichi and was published as a book in 1986. It is one of the most respected Japanese photobooks of the postwar era. It has had later editions, and in 2010 a panel of experts named Karasu the best photobook from 1986 to 2009.
Fukase’s work often explored isolation and tragedy and posed technical challenges, such as photographing moving ravens in near darkness. He once said he wished to “stop this world,” and by the end he felt he had become “a raven.”
In 1992 Fukase suffered a serious brain injury from a fall in a Tokyo bar, leaving him in a coma until his death in 2012. After his death, interest in his work grew again. In 2004 the Masahisa Fukase Trust published two books, Hysteric Twelve and Bukubuku; Bukubuku features underwater bathtub photography and is considered one of his late great works.
From 2015, exhibitions highlighted lesser-known pieces, and in 2016 Tate Modern showed Bukubuku prints in Performing for the Camera. In 2024 a biographical drama about Fukase, Ravens, was released.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 08:39 (CET).