Shoichi Aoki

Shoichi Aoki (青木 正一, Aoki Shōichi, born 1955) is a Japanese photographer and the creator of STREET Magazine, TUNE Magazine and FRUiTS magazine. He also subsequently created the Fruits and Fresh Fruits photo-books as a way of offering his photos to the foreign market.

Shoichi Aoki was born in Tokyo, began documenting street fashion in Tokyo's fashionable Harajuku area in the mid 1990s when he noticed a marked change in the way young people were dressing. Rather than following European and American trends, people were customising elements of traditional Japanese dress - kimono, obi sashes and geta sandals - and combining them with handmade, secondhand and alternative designer fashion in an innovative 'DIY' approach to dressing.

In 1997 Shoichi Aoki founded the monthly magazine FRUiTS, now a cult fanzine with an international following, to record and celebrate the freshness of fashion in Harajuku. All photographs in the exhibition were originally published in FRUiTS.

Both Fruits and Fresh Fruits are collections of Japanese street fashion. An interview with Aoki can be found http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/nightair/stories/s788802.htm here].

Magazines

• STREET (began in 1985)
• FRUiTS (began in 1997)
• TUNE (began in 2004)

Books

• Fruits - Phaidon Press (January 6, 2001) - ISBN 978-0-7148-4083-3
• Fresh Fruits - Phaidon Press (June 1, 2005) - ISBN 978-0-7148-4510-4