Kyotographie, Japan's leading international photography festival, opened its 2025 edition with the theme 'Edge,' featuring 14 exhibitions across Kyoto. The festival includes a major retrospective of Daido Moriyama, the 86-year-old pioneer of the 'are-bure-boke' aesthetic, showcasing over 200 images, 400 magazines, and 100 books. Also featured are British artist Linder Sterling, known for her punk-era feminist photomontages and album art for Buzzcocks, and Kenyan photographer Thandiwe Muriu, this year's African artist in residence, who uses patterned kitenge fabric to explore identity and female empowerment.
The festival matters because it highlights photography's enduring power to question media, identity, and social change. Moriyama's work, rooted in postwar Japan's cultural transition, and Sterling's subversive collages from the punk era both demonstrate how photographers have used the medium to challenge mainstream narratives. Kyotographie's broad theme of 'Edge' allows these diverse practices to converge, reinforcing the festival's role as a vital platform for international photography and critical visual culture in Asia.