Shigeo Anzai

Shigeo Anzai (安斎 重男, Anzai Shigeo; born 1939, died August 13th, 2020) was a Japanese photographer. A self-professed "art documentarist", Anzai is well-known for his prolific photographic documentation of artworks, exhibitions, and events of his time. He is also known for intimate portraits of popular modern and contemporary artists, which cast their subjects in an unexpected, unposed, and humanizing light. As Anzai noted for Artforum, he was interested in the "humanity" of his subjects, or the human being within the artist, rather than the artist within the human being. Anzai's style of portraiture stands in contrast to the popular modes of portrait photography of the time which monumentalized their subjects, as in the work of Hans Namuth. Anzai is known for his snapshots of artists such as Shuzo Takiguchi, Atsuko Tanaka, Yayoi Kusama, Tetsumi Kudo, Joseph Beuys, and Isamu Noguchi, among others.