arts, but he wasn’t interested in this approach. Nakayama was determined to stand on equal footing with European and America artists and to invent something novel.During the years that he worked on Kōga, Nakayama developed unique composite photography techniques. He described his goal in an essay he published in Asahi Camera, that he wanted to "create a scene through the hallucinogen of photography that could never be witnessed in real life." Seashells and seahorses seem to float in midair in his most experimental work. Nakayama experimented by using several different plates to print these experimental photographs. In the studio, he would also use a glass table, putting objects above and below the glass to play with depth, and he would also use mirrors to create shadows and reflections. Nakayama became more experimental in his expression, in contrast to the macro-level changes happening to photography in Japan. As Japan became more militaristic and involved itself in conflicts with the Soviet Union and China in the 1930s, the opinion that photography should capture reality and be used for journalistic reporting became dominant. Other experimental photographers who were involved in the New Photography movement shifted their efforts back to this photojournalistic approach. As this photojournalism in Japan became steeped in wartime ideology, Nakayama continued to pursue his avant-garde expression during the lean years of the war. After the war, Nakayama took some photos of the Kobe area that had been destroyed in the air raids but his post war activities were cut short. He suffered a stroke and passed away in 1949 at the age of 54. His wife Masako mentions in her biography that he had started drinking alcohol. It was just a few days after he was selected as a trustee of the Japanese Photography Association. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, as the academic discipline of Japanese Photography expanded, Nakayama's works were rediscovered and researched. Nakayama's works are included in the permanent collections of Modern Museum of Art in New York, United States; The British Museum in London, England; and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan. Selected photos References Nihon shashinka jiten () / 328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers. Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2000. . Despite the English-language alternative title, all in Japanese. Modern Photography Iwata Nakayama Retrospective/96-97 () Kyoto: Kōrinsha, 1996. Despite the English-language alternative title, all in Japanese. Japanese photographers 1895 births 1949 deaths People from Yanagawa, Fukuoka