Kaoru Usui

Who is Kaoru Usui?

Kaoru Usui is a Japanese photographer known for photographing children and the life of Nagoya and environs.

Usui was born in Nagoya on 12 December 1916; the actor Shigeru Amachi was a younger brother. He started photography around 1933 — when he bought a Rokuoh-sha Pearlette — and from 1934 subscribed to Photo Times, whose regular contributor Sakae Tamura inspired and influenced him.

From the 1930s to the 1950s, Usui worked to set up a series of amateur photography groups in Nagoya. One of these was Shūdan 35, whose members in 1952 included the young Shōmei Tōmatsu.

Between 1950 and 1955 Usui won the annual award in Camera three times, his works there being highly praised by Ken Domon, whose realist approach Usui followed enthusiastically. Usui went on to win contests judged by Domon and held by Photo Art in the late 1950s.

Usui was not content to stick with realism: some of the photographs from his staged series of the 1980s Arsène Lupin appeared in Popular Photography and the self-published book of them is well regarded.

Usui won Aichi-ken Geijutsu Bunka Shōreishō, a cultural award from Aichi Prefecture, in 1994. At around this time, he — like Shōji Ueda and several other photographers of his era — again came to enjoy photography with a besutan camera or lens.