Heroes

Heroes is the first exhibition in Switzerland devoted to Masayoshi Sukita, the Japanese photographer who captured and inspired David Bowie for over 40 years.
Born in 1938 in Nogata, northern Japan, Sukita’s photos are probably the most important ones on the London artist. Although his work is known worldwide through the iconic shots that illustrated the album cover HEROES, few people know that the relationship between Bowie and Sukita has over the years transformed into a friendship that has created a real association between the two artists, as well as in intimate shots and disarming beauty for their daily lives that are presented, some for the first time, at the occasion of this exhibition.

Masayoshi Sukita was born in a small coal-mining town in the north region of Kyushu, Japan, in 1938. His father was killed on the front line in China during World War II. Though he died when he was just seven, Sukita has vivid memories of his father taking photographs. When he was a child, Sukita’s uncle would take him on trips to the cinema, something that would influence him throughout his life. In his teens, Sukita would cycle 100km to see imported American films. He was most inspired by films starring Marlon Brando and James Dean, and those in which he encountered rock ’n’ roll. He credits film and music for teaching him expression in his photography. After high school, he attended and graduated from the “Japan Institute of Photography”, where he studied with Shisui Tanahashi. He then assisted an established photographer and entered the photographic division of an advertising agency in Osaka. Then in 1965 he moved to Tokyo, taking fashion photographs and filming TV commercials. He became a freelance photographer in 1970. Sukita’s works have been shown in numerous exhibitions as at the Brooklyn Museum, New York (2009), at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, at Shibuya Parco Museum in Tokyo, the Paul Smith Space Gallery and the SNAP Galleries London (2012), at the IMS Inter Media Station in Fukuoka (2013) , Bigstep Osaka (2014) and Mossgreen Gallery in Melbourne (2015).