Paris. In 1927, the family traveled to Berlin and Spain before returning to Japan later that year on the Trans-Siberian Express. Return to Japan After returning to Japan, he became professional photographer in Kobe and helped propel Japanese avant-garde photography. He established the Ashiya Camera Club (芦屋 カメラクラブ）with Kanbei Hanaya and Beniya Kichinosuke. He became one of the central figures in the Japanese New Photography Movement(新興写真）in the Kansai area. He released some works in such magazines as Asahi Camera and Nihon Shashin Nenkan (). Nakayama published a manifesto upon returning to Japan in which he stated his commitment to “Pure Art Photography” in Asahi Camera (January 1928). He wanted to create something “that only photography can produce.” This marked a shift in his photographic approach as he began to incorporate more negatives into his compositions, similar to Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s photogram technique. Curator of Shoto Museum of art, Yuri Mitsuda writes that Nakayama's technique was different in that it “consisted of repeatedly superimposing the same image, but he did not use the techniques of multiple exposures or chrono-photography." In 1932, Nakayama established the monthly magazine Kōga (光画) with Yasuzō Nojima and Nobuo Ina. The magazine was a critical turning point in Japanese artistic photography. Nakayama was a pioneer of Japanese avant-garde photography and inspired many Japanese photographers through his works. It was around this time that the European New Photography movement, which Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, and Albert Renger Patzsch were considered the forerunners, started to appear in the Photo Times journal. When the German Film und Foto exhibition was held in Tokyo and Osaka, the Avant-garde photography started to become recognized and the Ashiya Camera Club was praised. But Nakayama himself was critical of this superficial interest in the New Photography Movement, he wrote, “New Photography is just a name for the careless and jumbled combination of motifs such as slanted chimneys, cut-off buildings and unplessant close-ups.” He felt much of the photography in Japan lacked individuality and were merely imitations of European New Photography. Yuri Mitsuda writes that Nakayama grappled withthe complex attitude he held towards Western art. Precisely because Nakayama had first-hand knowledge of both American and European art, he showed great restraint in refraining from imitating them. Further, he resented Japan’s apparent inability to create something modern that was not an imitation of foreign models. Many of his contemporaries sought modern interpretations of traditional Japanese