Aya Fujioka (Photographer) Born in Hiroshima in 1972. Graduated from the Department of Photography, Nihon University College of Art. Fujioka moved to New York through the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Program of Overseas Study for Upcoming Artists and stayed there until 2013.  After returning to Hiroshima, she started documenting her hometown and published Here Goes River (AKAAKA). The book received the Kimura Ihei Photography Award and several other prizes.

In 2021, she participated in the exhibition Strategies for Responding to Uncomfortable Conversations at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and in 2022 held a solo exhibition at the Irie Taikichi Memorial Museum of Photography, Nara City. In 2023 and 2024, her work was included in numerous exhibitions in Japan and abroad, including group shows at SEIZAN Gallery New York. Her photographs are held in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

This fall, she will publish a new photo book, Life Studies, featuring works created during her stay in New York.

Pauline Vermare (Curator, Writer) Born in France, Vermare spent part of her childhood in Tokyo and later studied Japanese at INALCO, Paris. She is a photography historian and curator who has worked at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson (Paris), The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the International Center of Photography (ICP), and Magnum Photos (New York). She is currently the Phillip and Edith Leonian Curator of Photography at the Brooklyn Museum.

A board member of the Saul Leiter Foundation, she co-curated the retrospective All About Saul Leiter at Bunkamura in 2017. In addition to her long-term research on the Irish work of photographer Akihiko Okamura (The Memories of Others, Atelier EXB / Prestel), she co-edited I’m So Happy You Are Here (Aperture/Textuel) in 2024—a survey of Japanese women photographers from the 1950s to the present—and co-curated the accompanying traveling exhibition. Vermare is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Yuri Mitsuda (Art Critic, Professor) Born in Hyogo, Japan. Graduated from Kyoto University. Specializing in modern and contemporary art and photography, Mitsuda has served as a curator at the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, The Shoto Museum of Art in Tokyo, and The Museum of Modern Art in Toyama. Her publications include Photography: At the Interface with Art — History of Photography from the 1910s to the 1970s (Seikyusha) and Words and Things: Jiro Takamatsu’s Issue with Japanese Art, 1961–72 (Suiseisha). She currently teaches at Tama Art University.

Kimi Himeno (Founder, AKAAKA) Himeno founded AKAAKA in 2006 and has since collaborated with numerous photographers and artists to produce award-winning books, including projects with Masahisa Fukase, Rieko Shiga, and Yurie Nagashima.