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[1], 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.[2]
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
References