Mizuma Art Gallery

B06 / Tokyo, Japan / Singapore

+81-3-3268-2500
gallery@mizuma-art.co.jp
https://mizuma-art.co.jp/en/

AOYAMA Yuki was born in 1978 in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, and is currently based in Tokyo.
In 2002, after cycling across Japan and embarking on two journeys around the world, he resolved to devote his life to photography. Following his graduation from the University of Tsukuba in 2005 with a degree in psychology, he moved to Tokyo to establish himself as an independent photographer. In 2007, he received the Excellence Award at Canon’s New Cosmos of Photography.
Since 2009, Aoyama has published more than 100 books, including numerous photobooks, many of which have been translated into other languages. His series "schoolgirl complex" was adapted into a feature film in 2013, and his publications have become bestsellers with cumulative sales exceeding 100,000 copies.
In addition to photographing actors, idols, and entertainers who have become icons of their time, Aoyama creates works such as "Solaryman", "schoolgirl complex", and "Shōjo Raisan (In Praise of Girls)". These portrait series take “symbolic figures in Japanese society” as their motif, while also reflecting his personal perspectives on adolescence, girlhood, and the figure of the father.

“schoolgirl complex” is one of AOYAMA Yuki’s most representative series, initiated in 2006 and continued ever since.
As Aoyama recalls, during his adolescence he was unable to look his female classmates in the eye, let alone speak to them directly—and today he can hardly remember their faces. The series was born out of this formative experience, giving shape to his personal sense of “complex” toward the figure of the schoolgirl.
Sheer blouses, socks, legs extending from check-pattern skirts, the backs of knees, moles, or scabs—traces of individuality undeniably persist within the standardized uniform. For the adolescent Aoyama, such details were objects of both desire and imagination, but also of fear and anxiety. The series transforms those contradictory emotions into a refined visual language, extracting difference from uniformity and rendering it as “symbol.”
Within the history of Japanese photography, the figure of the schoolgirl in uniform resonates with a long-standing lineage of representations in postwar photography as well as in manga and anime culture. This subject has repeatedly been discussed as a projection of male desire and a site of critical debate. Aoyama’s work acknowledges this context, but grounds itself in his own adolescent experiences, thereby exposing the intersection of personal memory and broader social imagery.
Over nearly two decades, the focus of the series has shifted: from “the distance between Aoyama and the schoolgirl,” to “the relationships among the girls themselves,” and further toward exploring individuality rather than symbolic uniformity alone. These shifts resonate with contemporary discourses on gender and identity.
At Art Taipei this year, the latest works from this ongoing series will be presented.