Join us at ICP as renowned photographer Ryudai Takano is joined in conversation by art historian Emiko Inoue. Takano and Inoue will discuss queer representation beyond the body, the republication of Takano’s seminal photobook In My Room (2005) as a new edition titled In My Room Revisited (2026), as well as their recent exhibition Takano Ryudai: kasubaba Living through the ordinary, recently on view at Hiroshima MOCA and the Tokyo Museum of Photographic Art. Throughout his thirty-year career as a photographer, Ryudai Takano has explored a wide range of themes, from gender and sexuality to the politics of Tokyo’s urban landscapes, and more recently, the visual and conceptual possibilities of shadows.
This program is being offered both in person at ICP, located on NYC's Lower East Side, and online. Tickets to attend the conversation in person are $5 and include access to ICP’s galleries.
Arrive early to see our current exhibitions Eugene Atget: The Making of a Reputation, Latitudes: Nuits Balnéaires and François-Xavier Gbré, and HARD COPY NEW YORK, on view through May 4, 2026.
This program is supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan.
Ryudai Takano, Long hair nesting on a pink cloth, 2002 ©︎ Ryudai Takano Courtesy of Yumiko Chiba Associates
About the Speakers
Ryudai Takano has been engaged in his artistic practice on the theme of sexuality since 1994, in 2005 winning the Kimura Ihei Award for In My Room, a collection of photographs that attempt to give visual expression to the ambiguities that lie in the space between the dichotomies of man or woman, homosexual or heterosexual. Since then, he has produced a number of works viewing the “down there” matter of sexual desire in the context of its relationship to the likes of identity and social norms, including How to contact a man, which explores the theme of sexuality in pornographic format; and With me, whose unguarded expressions of sexuality led to trouble with the police. In addition, Takano has produced a series that questions the notion of a hierarchy of value in visual representation, including the Reclining Woo-Man series of “unmarketable” body images; and Kasubaba, which captures very familiar yet neglected parts of the distinctively Japanese urban landscape. Since the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011, Takano has been engaged in various projects on the theme of shadows. In 2021, Takano had his first museum solo exhibition TAKANO RYUDAI: DAILY PHOTOGRAPHS 1999-2021, at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan. Awarded The 72nd Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan in 2021, and the 38th Higashikawa Awards’ Domestic Photographer Award in 2022. In 2025, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography held Takano’s solo exhibition Takano Ryudai: kasubaba Living through the ordinary as the first of a series of exhibitions commemorating its 30th anniversary.
Emiko Inoue (she/they) is an art historian based in Tokyo, specializing in modern and contemporary art, as well as feminist and queer theory. She received the Feminist Institute Research Award for her master’s thesis at Hunter College, CUNY, where she focused on Mitsuko Tabe, a Japanese woman artist active in the 1960s. Currently, she is interested in the relationship between the “formative” years of queer theory in 1990s Japan and its ambiguous modes of representation.
Header Image: Ryudai Takano, Wearing a red leather coat, 2002 ©︎ Ryudai Takano Courtesy of Yumiko Chiba Associates
