Born in Tokyo in 1951, Yuriko Takagi is one of the most influential Japanese photographers of her generation, renowned for images that dissolve the boundaries between fashion, movement, and lived experience. Trained in visual communication at Musashino Art University and later in fashion design at Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham, Takagi began her career working as a designer in Europe before turning more fully to photography in the 1980s. That dual understanding of garments—as both constructed objects and lived forms—has shaped a practice that remains singular in fashion photography.
When Clothing Becomes a Second Skin
DIOR BY YURIKO TAKAGI © Yuriko Takagi.
DIOR BY YURIKO TAKAGI © Yuriko Takagi.
Takagi’s work is defined by a quiet refusal of spectacle. Working primarily in analog black-and-white, she employs long exposures, soft yet precise lighting, and subtle blur to suggest motion rather than arrest it. Figures seem to hover between appearance and disappearance; dresses ripple, stretch, and dissolve into space. Whether photographing traditional dress across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, or contemporary fashion in controlled studio environments, Takagi has remained focused on the relationship between body and clothing, clothing and space, and the tension between movement and stillness.
These concerns are central to “IN and OUT of MODE,” Takagi’s first solo exhibition in Germany, on view at Johanna Breede Photokunst through January 31, 2026. The exhibition brings together three series produced between 1992 and 1995, dedicated to the work of avant-garde designers Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and Comme des Garçons. Rather than presenting garments as products or status symbols, Takagi allows clothing to exist as a second skin—responsive, intimate, and inseparable from the body that animates it.
Yuriko Takagi on Photography as Choreography
DIOR BY YURIKO TAKAGI © Yuriko Takagi.
DIOR BY YURIKO TAKAGI © Yuriko Takagi.
In these photographs, nothing feels posed. Pleated fabrics echo waves or breath; figures blur at the edges, as if woven from light. Takagi has often described her approach as closer to choreography than direction, translating movement into still images without stripping it of vitality. The effect is cinematic without narrative and sensual without voyeurism—images that feel less like fashion photography than fragments of memory unfolding in real time. Shown largely as vintage prints, alongside a small number of hand-colored unique works, “IN and OUT of MODE” underscores the enduring relevance of Takagi’s vision in a medium often defined by immediacy.
That same sensitivity shapes Takagi’s recent collaboration with Dior, resulting in the book Dior by Yuriko Takagi, published by Rizzoli in September 2025. Rather than focusing solely on finished haute couture looks, Takagi turns her attention to the house’s toiles—those preliminary forms that Christian Dior himself considered essential expressions of cut, line, and shape. Fashion historian Olivier Saillard likens these toiles to “ghosts and specters,” a description that resonates deeply with Takagi’s own photographic language.
Photographed at 30 Avenue Montaigne and across Dior’s archives, the toiles appear animated by Takagi’s signature blur, suspended between idea and realization. Spanning the house’s history—from Christian Dior to John Galliano, Raf Simons, and Maria Grazia Chiuri—the images collapse time, allowing garments from different eras to exist within a single, dreamlike continuum. Flowers, long central to Dior’s visual language and to Takagi’s own sensibility, recur as quiet motifs, reinforcing the idea of fashion as a living, breathing form.
The Beauty of Ambiguity
DIOR BY YURIKO TAKAGI © Yuriko Takagi.
Together, “IN and OUT of MODE” and Dior by Yuriko Takagi reaffirm the photographer’s lifelong pursuit: capturing what Christian Dior once called “the movement of life.” In an era dominated by speed and sharpness, Takagi’s work insists on slowness, attention, and ambiguity. Beauty, in her images, does not announce itself—it drifts, lingers, and moves just beyond our grasp.
Installation view at Johanna Breede PHOTOKUNST in Berlin.
