Japanese photographer Kishin Shinoyama, known for portraying former Beatle John Lennon in some of his iconic (and last) photographs together with his wife Yoko Ono, as well as other celebrities over the course of his five-year career, died on Thursday 4 January at age 83 in Tokyo.
The photographer spent five days with the couple in 1980 and the photo of them kissing was used for the cover of their album «Double Fantasy», released in the autumn of the same year. Shinoyama later acknowledged that he was the one who suggested the couple kiss for the shot.
His photos also appear in the album «Milk and Honey» (1984), published three years after Lennon’s assassination using incomplete recordings of songs written during the making of the previous album «Double Fantasy». Shinoyama, whose real name was Michinobu Shinoyama, photographed iconic characters from several genres, including novelist Yukio Mishima (1925-70), singer Momoe Yamaguchi, actress Rie Miyazawa, and kabuki actor Bando Tamasaburo.
Born in Tokyo on December 3, 1940, Shinoyama has distinguished himself as a photographer since his days as a photography class at the Nihon University College of Art. He became a freelance photographer in 1968 after working for an advertising agency. In 1970 Shinoyama rose to prominence for the portraits of Yukio Mishima that he took at the request of the giant of Japanese literature shortly before he committed suicide: some photos show him in the guise of Saint Sebastian.
Ishin Shinoyama had also become famous in his homeland for his work which brought the faces of the biggest stars of his era onto the covers of newspapers, magazines and books. Also known for taking artistic nude photos, his images of Rie Miyazawa and another actress, Kanako Higuchi, both published in 1991, became wildly popular. But his photo shoots with naked women have also been the subject of controversy: in 2010 a Tokyo court ordered him to pay a fine for indecency in a public place and blasphemy for photographing a naked woman in a Tokyo cemetery. The imposition of the fine sparked a debate about the authorities’ intervention on freedom of expression, but Shinoyama did not dispute, saying: «I have been taking nude photos outdoors since the 1960s. But (whether the act is considered an offense or not) is determined by the mood of the time. It cannot be done otherwise.” Not limited to celebrity photos, Shinoyama also photographed ordinary people, as well as notable architecture and cityscapes. Among his subjects were also the victims of the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011 in north-eastern Japan and the Fukushima nuclear complex destroyed by the disaster. In 2021 an exhibition featuring Shinoyama’s works was held at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.