There's a quiet solitude about Ueda's photographs, almost luminous in their stillness and resonating with a surety that needs to show us, the viewer, something that we are missing, something we can not see. They are akin to a unending paradigm that is both mesmerising and beautiful.

Shōji Ueda was one of Japanese photography’s most remarkable figures and remained profoundly attached to his birthplace of Tottori, on the Sea of Japan, which he used as a backdrop for the vast majority of his work. He was a sedentary adventurer, ceaselessly exploring the dunes that sculpted the landscape close to his home. He is best known for his series Sand Dunes, in which he posed children and adults in the dunes near his home and photographed them as if they were movable pieces in a giant film set.

Shoji Ueda, 1939, Four Girls, Four Positions

Shoji Ueda, 1949, Papa, Mama and the Children

Shoji Ueda, 1949, Doodle Face