Kanjo Take
Freelance Photographer
Born in Berlin in 1953 as the son of a Japanese father and a German mother, Kanjo Take lived alternately in Japan and Germany. Following his studies of painting at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Granada/Spain, he attended the HDK in Berlin/Germany to study photography and communication, finishing with a diploma thesis.
As one of the youngest and most successful art directors of his time he lived in Tokyo, London, New York, Zurich and Hamburg. Independent of this he made extended trips to Australia, China, Russia, Japan, Sweden and India to take photographs which led to an extensive work of landscape photos and the very special Asian still lives.
Kanjo Take is considered to be one of the great still-lifers in the world and made impressive campaigns as an art director and photographer. He lives between Hamburg and Shanghai.
In 2002, Take was one of the first to work with the digital camera of Olympus, the most innovative at the time. A new era of creation began. Olympus gave the artist complete freedom to create photo projects in order to present the new technology worldwide. The results were sophisticated and spectacular photo performances:
2003
- Beauty and Danger / Stills YSL-jewellery with poisonous animals
- Frogmen I / Art-Fashion with frogmen
- Frogmen II / frogmen – dry run
- Manga I /photomanga released on Weiss
2004
- Gods of Paradise/ female heroes from western mythology and legends stand as a counterpole to Asian culture.
- Manga II / Art-Fashion photoseries – flying Mangas /Max Magazine
- Us and them / Art-Fashion photoseries – AS FOUR / Olympus
- Kazu / Art Fashion photoseries – KAZU Fashion / master pupil of Vivien Westwood
It is remarkable that in 2004 Kanjo Take entered the people and art fashion field for the first time, and with a ‘roll of the drums” aroused the interest of the international photo press.
In December 2005, the All Magazine/Shanghai brought a 6-page report on Kanjo Take’s work. The Chinese Vogue presented Take’s Manga worlds in connection with his exhibitions. TV and print media also reported about the work of Kanjo Take in China in 2004 and 2005.
In summer 2005, at the invitation of and together with the artist Xiao Hui Wang, Kanjo Take organised the first creative national Chinese photo competition at the Tongji University in Shanghai. The project was sponsored by BASF, and 120 photographers from all over China were placed on the short list and awarded prizes by an international Jury.
The entries were summarised in an exceptional photo volume. During this stay in China the Diptichon Miss Wang-Rot I + II was produced, which had the title “photo of a charity” and was auctioned by Christies in October 2005.
The artistic and friendly exchange with Xiao Hui Wang and the thus associated joint work led to the fact that Take moved into his first studio in Shanghai in 2006.
Kanjo Take has created the most original photomangas worldwide so far, which were on show for more than three months in the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai under Prof. Victoria Lu, starting January 2006, and in a presentation in Shanghai, Singapore and Taiwan.