31st Higashikawa International Photo Festival

The Higashikawa International Photo Festival in Hokkaido is the longest running photography festival in Japan, which annually awards 5 photographers with a prestigious prize. Along with four local artists, New Zealand’s Anne Noble is one of this year’s winners. The 31st Higashikawa International Photo Festival takes place 4 August - 2 September 2015. Higashikawa was declared as the 'Town of Photography' in 1985. Since holding this title, Higashikawa has been a platform for the meeting of people, photography culture and nature over the last thirty years. Celebrating 120 years of resource development of the land, Higashikawa was declared the Culture Capital of Photography in May 2014, with the determination to link photography and people across the world. The Higashikawa International Photo Festival is organized annually to vitalize the town of Higashikawa, transforming it into a “photo town” according to the concepts outlined in the “Photo Town Manifesto.” Devoted to photography and people who love photography, it provides a yearly focus for the activities of Higashikawa’s citizens and suggests new directions for the future. The winner of the Overseas Photographer Award 2015 (amounting to JPY 1 million) went to New Zealand’s Anne Noble, one of the country’s most respected contemporary photographers. Noble is widely renowned for images of her daughter’s mouth, as well as those of Antarctica. The latter has been a major focus of her work over the last decade, resulting in a series of photographic books, including her award-winning The Last Road (Clouds, 2014), and national and international exhibition projects. Recently, Noble has also turned to exploring the decline of the honeybee and global threats to complex natural systems. The exhibition features the 2015 award winners: Overseas Photographer Award: Anne Noble Domestic Photographer Award: Tokihiro Sato New Photographer Award: Maiko Haruki Special Photographer Award: Kazutoshi Yoshimura Hidano Kazuemon Award: Kikujiro Fukushima and you can read more about the Awards on Art Radar Asia In 2014, Higashikawa joined the Asia Pacific PhotoForum network of photography festivals around the Asia-Pacific region and rim. Image: © Anne Noble | Ruby's Room #10, from the series 'Ruby's Room' 1998-2006