BENRIDO

Founded in 1887, BENRIDO began as a small rental bookstore in Kyoto, Japan, and later developed into one of only two remaining collotype printing companies in Japan. Today, it also operates in the fields of cultural heritage restoration, high-precision photographic printing, and art publishing.

Collotype printing was introduced to Japan in the 1880s, and BENRIDO began producing collotype prints in 1905. As one of the earliest photographic printing techniques, collotype was invented in France in 1855 by Alphonse Poitevin for photographic image reproduction. Owing to its exceptional output quality and archival value, the process has since been used primarily for the reproduction and preservation of Japanese national treasures and cultural heritage. Today, BENRIDO remains one of the very few companies in the world still capable of producing refined color collotype prints.

Returning for its second participation at PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai, BENRIDO presents works ranging from the Provoke generation of legendary Japanese photographers such as Daido Moriyama and Takuma Nakahira, to the 1950s New York photographs of Saul Leiter, a pioneer of 20th-century color photography. Spanning different eras and cultural contexts, the presentation reveals multiple photographic languages—from documentary to conceptual, from poetic lyricism to austere rationality, and from black-and-white to color.

Participating Artists:
Issei Suda, Shoji Ueda, Masahisa Fukase, Daido Moriyama, Takuma Nakahira, Miyako Ishiuchi, Masao Yamamoto, Fan Ho, Rinko Kawauchi, Koji Onaka, Chieko Shiraishi, Toshiya Watanabe, Saul Leiter, Candida Höfer, J. H. Lartigue, Stephen Gill, Antony Cairns, Charlotte Dumas, Michael Kenna, Ron Jude, and Awoiska van der Molen.