and graduated from the graphic design department in 1973. During his studies, he participated to a discussion group called "Thought Collective Being", which is the starting point of the Bikyōtō collective, of which he was briefly a part. In the early 1970's, he worked as a designer and self-trained photographer for publications such as Toshi Jūtaku, Jūtaku Kenchiku, Asahi Graph, and Tokyojin. Miyamoto’s approach is indebted to his early years working as an architectural photographer, a field dominated by the so-called objective style of reportage photography (hōdō shashin). Miyamoto’s early career in architectural journalism suggests an origin for his interest in historic architecture and contextualizes his choice of serial photography as a form of preservation. Miyamoto took on the supposedly neutral role of reporter or "surveyor". His career as an independent photographer gained momentum in 1983, when upon hearing of the impending demolition of the notorious Nakano Prison, he was contracted by the pictorial journal Asahi Graph to document the demolition. Miyamoto returned to the prison on his own throughout the demolition. As the interiors were dismantled and wall after wall came crashing down, he felt as if the materials that comprised the buildings were being released from their role as “Architecture” dictated by humans : Ruins such as the Nakano prison remind him of the post-war landscapes he saw as a child. After this project, Miyamoto began to photograph structures in the process of their dismantlement. He used the term kaitai genba ("scenes of dismemberment of a building") rather than ruin, drawing an analogy between building and human body (kaibô genba meaning anatomical dissection). Architectural Apocalypse After documenting the demolition of Tokyo's Nakano Prison in 1983, Miyamoto spent five years observing the changing face of the city and its architecture. He focused on demolition sites, which he calls "tsukanoma no haikyo" or "temporary ruins". The curator Hasegawa Yuko describes this fondness for ruins as a "corrective reaction to the violent changes in the cityscape that had become the status quo."Beginning with Hans Poelzig’s Grosses Schauspielhaus in Berlin, Architectural Apocalypse documents the final days of historic early-twentieth-century buildings, traces of the past that had been deemed inefficient, out of place, and unnecessary in the globalizing metropolis. Miyamoto pictures them individually with a focus on the material decomposition of the structure. The buildings that Miyamoto photographed in the midst of their demolition represent a range of industries geared towards popular entertainment,