Born 1939 in Fukui. Graduated from the University of Fukui’s School of Engineering. Started working as a freelance photographer after quitting his day job at the head office of Pola Inc.Taught at the Tokyo College of Photography in 1971-96, and was a professor at Osaka University of Arts in 2000-13. Next to continuously taking photographs at bomb sites in Hiroshima for five decades since around 1975, he has been capturing the changing faces of Japan over the years of rapid economic growth and the “economic bubble,” in photographs themed around local cultures such as festivals and other folk customs. Well-known works include “Autistic Space” (1971, Taiyo Award), “Hiroshima 1945-1978” (1978, Ina Nobuo Award), “Hiroshima” (1984, Photographic Society of Japan Award) and “Tsuchida Hiromi’s Nippon: Chronicling Japan” (2008, Domon Ken Award). Photobooks include Zokushin (’76), Counting Grains of Sand (’90), Berlin (’11), Fukushima (’18) and Aging (’22). In addition to the ongoing long-term documentary project “Fukushima” (2011-), he has been visiting Berlin and Jerusalem since 1999 and 2005 respectively, in order to be able to discuss the matter of Hiroshima from a relativistic standpoint. Aging, for which he has been taking one selfportrait every day since 1986, is a series themed around “time and memento mori” that developed out of an idea to try and epress aspects of continuation, repetition, and the inability of the eye to perceive gradual transformation.
Tsuchida’s works are included in the collections of the MoMA in New York, the Centre
Pompidou, the National Gallery of Canada, Tate Modern, the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (TOP), the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, and other museums around the world.