Shunji Dodo

Dodo was born in Osaka in 1947. He graduated in fine arts from Kyushu Sangyo University in 1970, and started teaching at Tōkyō Shashin Senmon Gakkō (now Visual Arts College Tokyo). Two years later he started work as a teacher of photography at Ōsaka Shashin Senmon Gakkō; in 1998 he was made head of the school, by that time renamed Visual Arts College Osaka. Dodo was present when the film director Naomi Kawase, who had first been a student of his and was later teaching at Visual Arts Senmon Gakkō, had her first baby on 24 April 2004, in Nara. This was filmed as Tarachime and Dodo photographed the event; the photographs were exhibited in Nara, Tokyo, and Locarno, and published as Haha. Dodo's book of large-format black-and-white photographs A Radiant Land: Kii Peninsula won the PSJ's Annual Award for 1995; his later collection of large-format colour photographs of the peninsula, A Radiant Land with Thousands of Years, was exhibited in Nara City Museum of Photography in 2000. The latter work also won him the Ina Nobuo Award in 1999. Dodo has said that his major influences were Shōmei Tōmatsu, especially his Ryūkyū series "Pencil of the Sun", and Yutaka Takanashi, for the way in which Takanashi's concentration on Tokyo showed Dodo his own possibilities in Osaka. Among the photographers he admires are Robert Frank and William Klein.

• Illustration — "Osaka" exhibition in the Osaka Nikon Salon, December 2011 • 1978 "Ōsaka, Tennōji". Nikon Salon (Ginza, Osaka). • 1985 "Shinsekai: Mukashi mo ima mo". Nikon Salon (Ginza, Osaka). • 1992 "Shujō yūraku, Bankoku". Nikon Salon (Ginza, Osaka). • 1995–96 "Rakudo Kii hantō". Konica Plaza (Shinjuku, Osaka, Sapporo). • 1999 "Sennen rakudo". Nikon Salon (Ginza, Osaka). • 2000 "Sennen rakudo Kii hantō". Nara City Museum of Photography. • 2002 ".com New York". Nikon Salon (Shinjuku). • 2004 "Sharasōju". Visual Arts Gallery. • 2006 "Haha". Gallery Out of Place (Nara). • 2007 "Ha ha". Galerie Focale (Nyon). • 2007 "Haha + vegetable". Gallery Bauhaus (Tokyo). • 2007 "Ha ha". Focale Galerie (Locarno). • 2010 "Osaka". Nikon Salon (Ginza and Osaka). • 2010 "Kamagasaki/Shinsekai: Life in the shadow of the economic miracle". Zen Foto Gallery (Shibuya, Tokyo). Photographs of Shinsekai and Kamagasaki (both in Osaka) by Dodo and Seiryū Inoue. • 2010 "Osaka". Tokio Out of Place (Minami Azabu, Tokyo).