FUMI NAGASAKA

Fumi Nagasaka was born in Nagoya, Japan, the daughter to a prominent Japanese racecar driver, Naoki Nagasaka. Watching her father compete in international racing championships from the pit, Fumi was taught to fearlessly chase her dreams and never to give up. She continues her father's chase today through her beautiful photography. Fumi relocated to New York City from Japan in 2001, and by 2003 she began shooting for Japanese cult magazine STREET. After spending time traveling around Europe, Fumi found work in 2007 shooting for several notorious fashion and culture magazines.

Fumi's photography is at once classic and contemporary. Through her often-grainy lens, Fumi's eye captures a densely romantic landscape of bodies that she finds hidden in plain sight. Her snapshot aesthetic is largely concerned with overlooked yet unquantifiable beauty in a relentlessly fleeting reality. Whether immortalizing models, musicians, or club-going youth, Fumi isolates the innocence and the priceless incandescence of each subject, casting an intimate light on their humanness as they straddle -as Fumi herself does- the line between street subculture and the shimmering artifice of fashion (two worlds which are mutually dependent on one another and grow increasingly indistinguishable as time goes on).

It is not hard to see the strong influence of Fumi's professed hero Nan Goldin in her body of work. That is not to say, however, that the work is in any sense stylistically retro, imitative, nor contrived. On the contrary, Fumi's photographs are candid, contemplative, and wholly spontaneous. In essence, Fumi reinterprets Goldin's practice for a new generation. By doing so, she manages to uniquely capture the new wave from an immersed standpoint. Fumi's world and her place beneath the breakers of this wave are impenetrable and hers alone. One can merely duck and cover as it comes crashing down on the clubs, streets, and shifting landscapes of the western world.

When she isn't snapping photos, Fumi spends her time writing for Japanese magazines, interviewing bands, casting male models, and DJing all over the world. Music is Fumi's greatest artistic inspiration, and she cites artists like Joy Division, New Order, the Stone Roses, Depeche Mode, and Talking Heads as some of her all-time favorite bands. Her style icons are David Bowie, Patti Smith and Norwegian death metal band Turbonegro.

Fumi is currently based in New York, living in Williamsburg. She has contributed work to Dazed & Confused, Dazed Japan, Tank, Placed, Sang Bleu, dazeddigital.com and Nylon Japan. Every summer, Fumi devotes her time to personal photographic projects, which have culminated in several documentary series. Fumi's work has been exhibited in New York, London, and Berlin.