Seiji Kurata

Seiji Kurata (born 1945) is a Japanese photographer best known for his raw and visceral documentation of Tokyo's nightlife, yakuza subculture, and urban street life during the 1970s and 1980s. His seminal photobook 'Flash Up' (1980) captured the seedy underbelly of Japanese society with a confrontational, high-contrast aesthetic using harsh flash photography. Kurata's work is considered a significant contribution to Japanese street photography, drawing comparisons to the gritty social realism of Daido Moriyama while maintaining its own distinctive intensity.