Inspiration can come from the strangest places: here, we take a closer look at the archive of photographer Kiyoji Otsuji.Otsuji, born in 1923 in Tokyo, Japan, was a photographer in the broadest sense. Shifting from commercial photography to graphic design to image-based conceptual art throughout his career, his appreciation for the photographic medium was unique. His work echoes and sometimes anticipates avant-garde and is characterised as highly experimental – both in his idiosyncratic approach to portraiture, but also in the highly fabricated scenarios he would depict. Finally, Otsuji was deeply immersed in to the art scene of Tokyo, and some of his finest work is his documentation of other performance artists (like above, documenting a work by Gutai collective.) Never at home in any category, his work, which rarely would be defined as dealing with clothes, is truly inspiring from a fashion point of view, and anticipates, in a way, much fashion photography that was to come. 
