Street Photography Awards 2025 Enter Today

Kumi Oguro

Selected works (after "HESTER")
  • Location:
    Antwerp, Belgium
  • Gallery Representation:
    IBASHO, Antwerp, Belgium
    ARTDYNE, Tokyo Japan
  • Schools Attended:
    Transmedia, Hogeschool Sint-Lukas Brussel, Postgraduate Program in Arts+Media+Design
    Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp
    Film Studies and Image Culture, University of Antwerp
About Kumi Oguro

Kumi Oguro was born in Japan in 1972.
She began studying photography in London in 1996 and continued at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp until 2003.
In addition to photography, she also experimented with video and installation in a postgraduate program, Transmedia in Brussels. Her research theme in the program was the relationship between still and moving images.
This is also the subject of her thesis for the master course in Film Studies and Image Culture at the University of Antwerp in 2006.

Oguro has participated in exhibitions and art/photography fairs in Europe, the USA, Canada and Japan.
In 2016 and 2017, she took part in the travelling exhibition FotoFilmic '16 –
Los Angeles / Vancouver / Melbourne.
She won the 4th place in this juried exhibition.
She created images for the production of the Flemish Opera.
Her images have been used in programmes for the Opéra national de Paris and the Festival D'Aix-en-Provence, among others, and have become the covers of several novels.

Her first book NOISE was published in 2008 by Le caillou bleu (Brussels).

Her second book HESTER was published by Stockmans Art Books / Bruno Devos (Duffel, Belgium) in 2021. This book was shortlisted for the Belfast Photo Festival 2022.

In 2024 she won the BBA One Shot Award.

She lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium since 1999.

Featured on LensCulture
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    Ibasho Gallery
    A wide selection of images from an exhibition focused on 12 female artists illustrates the breadth and power of the work created by women in Japan.
  • #1 (NOISE)
    Kumi Oguro
    These photos are all inspired to some degree by the language of cinema — the staging of locations, placing bodies in real-life situations, the expressionist use of light, the theatrical play between actors, indications of an off-camera area, effects designed to create tension, veiled references to the logic of genres, and more.
  • Waking Images from Dreams
    Kumi Oguro
    Dream logic and dream images seem to exist outside time, suspended in ambiguous space, with their own hidden meanings — this young Japanese photographer has been exploring the theme of dream images for several years now, always with anonymous female models with long hair and hidden faces.
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Kumi Oguro's Projects on LensCulture
Kumi Oguro's Books