Masataka Takayama (photographer), Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetMasataka Takayama (photographer)
Japanese photographer
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Tokyo, Japan
About Masataka Takayama (photographer)
- Masataka Takayama (?? ??, Takayama Masataka; 15 May 1895 - 14 April 1981) was one of the most prominent Japanese photographers in the first half of the twentieth century. Takayama was born in Tokyo, Japan.
- As an amateur photographer, he published many of his works in the magazine Geijutsu Shashin Kenkyu (??????), beginning in the 1920s.
- He remained an active photographer even after World War II. He was talented at pictorialist (art) photography and took many photographs using a soft focus lens and deformation and "wipe-out" techniques. Takayama usually used a "vest-pocket" Kodak camera (a very compact folding model taking 127 film) with a single-element lens (a tangyoku lens in Japanese).
- These cameras (and Japanese derivatives such as the Rokuoh-sha Pearlette and Minolta Vest) were popular in Japan at the time for snapshot use, and called ves-tan (???, in Japanese pronunciation besutan) cameras; "ves" coming from "vest" and "tan" from tangyoku.
- Takayama's works are thus said to belong to the "ves-tan" (besutan) school.
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