Asako Naruto is a visual artist whose work is defined by a contemplative and incisive gaze, focusing on the traces of absence and untold urban narratives. Her practice is less concerned with direct recording than with sensing the faint persistence of what has already passed. Drawing on her scholarly background in Art History, Naruto explores the threshold where perception, memory, and imagination overlap, frequently utilizing reflections and fragments to reveal presences that remain just beyond direct sight.

In her series Phantom Frames, Naruto reconsiders the meaning of the snapshot by attending to accidental images emerging within functional mirrors—traffic, vehicle, and safety mirrors—embedded in urban spaces. By photographing these incidental reflections, she creates an "image of an image," a layered process that challenges the assumption of photography as a transparent record of reality. Formally, her work utilizes precise aperture control to render mirror surfaces with clinical sharpness while optically isolating the reflected image from its surroundings. This technique creates a quiet tension where what is seen and what is sensed remain misaligned, echoing the Japanese pictorial motif of Tagasode-zu—evoking human presence through its tangible absence.

Naruto’s rapid ascent in the international art world is marked by winning the Grand Prix at both the Paris International Street Photo Awards and the B&W International Awards for two consecutive years. Her work has been exhibited at ART-ICON in Paris and Arles, and her first photobook, All the Fading Words, was published in 2025. Through her experimental use of prisms, split diopters, and a scholarly approach to visual culture, Naruto continues to extract fragile, quiet narratives from the continuous flow of the modern city.

Education & Training

2020

PhD in Art History, Nagoya University, Japan

1996

Bachelor of Design, Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan

Exhibition & Projects (Selection)

2025

PISPA Winners Exhibition, Magazzini Fotografici, Napoli, Italy
Treviso Photographic Festival, Treviso, Italy
B&W International Awards Winners Exhibition, Kiff & Marais, Paris, France
Faces (ART-ICON), Open Air Exhibition, Arles, France
TIFA Winners Exhibition, House of Lucie, Budapest, Hungary

2024

Corporeality (ART-ICON), Bastille Design Center, Paris, France