While major exhibitions of Japanese photography have become steadily more frequent over the last thirty years, Ravens & Red Lipstick offers one of the first overviews of the subject to be published in English.

Visually bold and richly detailed, this volume traces the development of Japanese photography from the severity of post-war Realism to the diversity and technical ingenuity of photography in contemporary Japan, via movements and groups such as Vivo in the 1960s and ‘girls’ photography’ in the 1990s. Interleaved are new interviews with some of the most influential practitioners in photographic history, from Moriyama Daido to Araki Nobuyoshi and Kawauchi Rinko.

Lena Fritsch writes with imagination and clarity, interrogating a cross-section of photographic movements and works against the vivid, shifting backdrop of Japanese social, cultural and political history. The result is both an accessible introduction and an illuminating work of analysis, for general readers and aficionados alike.