Kokoro Uozumi

Kokoro Uozumi is a photographer and visual philosopher based in Yokohama, Japan, working under the name Kokorography. His practice is rooted in Japanese aesthetics — the beauty of shadow, of silence, and of what emerges without words. Influenced by Junichiro Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows, Kakuzo Okakura's The Book of Tea, and the paintings of Kaii Higashiyama, his work seeks to capture not the surface of the world, but its inner light.
Central to his visual language is the Leica Thambar-L 90mm f/2.2 — a rare original vintage soft-focus lens designed in 1935. Through its gentle aberrations, contours dissolve into softness, and a world of impermanence emerges. It is through this lens that the Japanese concepts of Yugen and Utsuroi find their visual form. Alongside the Thambar, he works with a range of Leica lenses, each chosen for its ability to render light and shadow in harmony with his artistic vision.
His photography is the culmination of a lifelong pursuit of essence — an innate, relentless curiosity that drives him not toward the visible surface of things, but toward their innermost truth. Every chapter of his life has become the sensor through which he sees. What he calls the "Mind's Eye" — Shingan.
His work has been shortli...