Movement and light. I have never been interested in the still, composed frame.
Akiko Kano — photographer, Tokyo. Portrait, travel and editorial assignments in Japan and abroad, in Japanese and English.
Work
Chiang Mai · August 2026
One lens, one week.
Northern Thailand, shot entirely on a 50mm. No zoom, no second body — you walk closer or you don't take it. Markets, workshops, the people who run them, and the food they make.
London · 1994–97
Where the work began.
Film, cross-processed, printed and later scanned. Three years in London as a student and then an assistant, carrying a camera everywhere and developing whatever came back strange.
Portraits
People, and the colour they move through.
Commissioned and personal. Studio, street and location — most of them made in the half-second after someone stops posing.
Instant
Instant, 1995–
Ten years of instant film, carried in a coat pocket through England, Japan and Thailand. One frame at a time, no second attempt, the colour decided by whatever the expired pack felt like doing. The only work here I made for nobody. Still going.
Stage — Archive
1997–2010
Thirteen years in the pit and the wings. Eleven of them as Utada Hikaru's official tour photographer. I no longer shoot music regularly — this is where the eye was trained.
Private archive
The full tour archive — eleven years with Utada Hikaru, and other commissions — is held on a password-protected page. Available to commissioning clients on request.
About
I have spent my working life photographing people in movement — first on stage, now mostly on the road.
I learned the work in London. I moved there in 1994 after university and took the Media Foundation course at the London College of Printing and Distributive Trades, now London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. For two years I was at ZIM Production, coordinating recording sessions for Japanese labels and musicians working in the UK — studios, equipment, locations, logistics. I was in the room while records were being made before I ever photographed one.
Back in Japan from 1997 I worked freelance in music for over a decade, including eleven years as Utada Hikaru's official tour photographer. I stepped away for some years to raise my children and returned to the work in 2016.
These days I photograph travel and portraits, and I also interview, write, edit and retouch — often all four on the same commission. My pictures run dark and high-contrast, closer to the colour of cross-processed film than to anything clean. I am after the air in a room, and the half-second where someone moves.
I work in Japanese and English, and take assignments in Japan and abroad.
Selected work
Background
Services
Coverage in Japan, end to end.
Photography
Travel and location, portrait, events. Editorial and commissioned work, in Tokyo and anywhere the assignment goes.
Interview & editorial
Research, interviewing, writing and editing, in Japanese and English. For publications and brands that need someone on the ground in Japan rather than a fixer, a translator and a photographer in three separate contracts.
Retouching & colour
Lightroom and Photoshop. Batch colour work so a whole series reads as one set.
The full commission
Shoot, interview and finished piece — one brief, one invoice, one person accountable.
Day rate, half-day rate or per project; usage agreed in advance. Selected and retouched files within one week, full unretouched set on request. Available for travel across Asia and Europe.
Contact
For rates, availability and commissions. I reply within 24 hours, in Japanese or English.