Alum Hiroyuki Ito (Tisch '97) was interviewed by American Photo Mag on the release of his new self-published photo book, Japan. The book is selected pictures Ito, a native of Japan but a permanent resident of the U.S., took while traveling throughout his homecountry in 2015.
In the interview, Ito describes how his time in New York and his training at the Department of Photography and Imaging at NYU Tisch School of the Arts influenced the way he works today, his continued use of analog cameras, and his preference for self-publishing. From the June 7, 2016 article by Jeanette D. Moses, "Shoot Now, Think Later: Hiroyuki Ito Rediscovers Japan":
Why did you decide to shoot film for this project?
I studied photography in the early '90s in school, so that's how people did it: you shoot the film, you process the film and then you make prints. That's how I developed my way of working...
This is the fourth book that you’ve self-published through Blurb—what is it that you like about self-publishing?
Nobody demands my work so if I waited for people to give me a project to make a book, then I might just not publish anything and then I just die. I feel like if nobody asked me for anything, I might just make it for myself. When I was a student, I didn't have to pay my rent so I just shot what I wanted to shoot. That was how I was shooting at NYU. Then I started with the Village Voice and I eventually moved to the New York Times. I had an illusion if I worked hard, people were going to give me what I wanted to shoot. That never happened, nobody asked me to do what I wanted to do, so I just had to do it by myself.