Ryuji Miyamoto

*1947

After completing his studies in graphic design at Tama Art University in 1973, Ryuji Miyamoto worked as an architectural photographer for magazines such as Toshi Jutaku. In the 1980s he began photographing dilapidated architecture and ruins in Asia and Europe and portrayed the improvised housing of homeless people in Tokyo in the series, Cardboard Houses. In 1991 he lived in New York on an Asian Cultural Council fellowship and was awarded the Golden Lion for the best national pavilion at the 1996 Venice Biennale, where he also premiered the series After The Earthquake. In 2001 he took up a professorship first at the Kyoto University of Art and Design and later, in 2005, at the Kobe Design University.