Gravure photographer Seiichi Nomura looks back on his career

Gravure photographer Seiichi Nomura recently sat down for an interview with Aera.dot in which he looked back on his five-decade-long career, during which he has photographed countless numbers of idols, actresses, models, and singers.

“I’ve done more than 400 hundred photo books and thousands of covers for weekly magazines,” Nomura estimates.

Originally an interior photographer, Nomura got into gravure by necessity: he needed the money. In the summer of 1976, at the age of 25, he traveled to Europe. After he returned, though, he was told by his clients that he had been away too long and they would no longer hire him.

So he started shooting women instead and made his debut in a women’s magazine that year after he approached the editors.

Over the following years, his lens captured the likes of Rie Miyazawa, Yoko Minamino, Hikaru Nishida, Yuriko Ishida, Akina Nakamori, Yuki Saito, Akiko Yada, Haruka Ayase, and Pink Lady.

It might sound like a lot of fun and games, larking around with scantily clad models, but his job required real skill and precision at times. Like when he shot Rinko Kikuchi for the magazine Sabra in 2007 and was told that he would get literally just one minute to get all his shots.

Nomura has a new photography exhibition happening concurrently at Leica Gallery Tokyo, Leica Gallery Kyoto, and Leica Professional Store Tokyo from today until May 20.