GREG GIRARD: “PRESENT PERFECT: PHOTOGRAPHING THE HERE AND NOW” 
TOKYO ⇢ OKINAWA, JAPAN
MARCH 26 – APRIL 2, 2026

REGISTRATIONS ARE CLOSED.

[8-DAY TRAVELING WORKSHOP]
GREG GIRARD: “PRESENT PERFECT: PHOTOGRAPHING THE HERE AND NOW”
TOKYO (MARCH 26–28) + NAHA, OKINAWA (MARCH 31–APRIL 2, 2026)

As another amazing year comes to a close, we are thrilled to open the new one by announcing our new 8-day traveling workshop in Japan with iconic photographer Greg Girard this spring! As we have done since 2023, we look forward to bringing again a small group of 12 photographers coming from all around the world to Tokyo, then on to Naha, Okinawa, connecting the nation’s beating heart to its southernmost confines through the constant making of immersive fresh work! 

The infinite contrasts that exist between the two places will give participants an exceptional chance to get better acquainted with the realities of contemporary Japan, while following in the footsteps of Girard’s iconic photographs made there since the late seventies. The workshop will include group portfolio reviews of the participants’ existing work, directed assignments in both places with both group and individual follow up critiques, as well as presentations by Greg of his own masterful work peppered with reviews of Japanese photographers influential to him.

Furthering their immersion into Japanese photographic culture, participants will also get the opportunity to visit ongoing exhibitions at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, where the workshop will be hosted in Tokyo. In Naha, our workshop group will pay the INTERFACE Shōmei Tōmatsu Lab an afternoon visit delving into the powerful legacy of a legend of Japanese photography, guided by his late wife, collaborator, and Space Director Yasuko Tōmatsu. Participants will gain access to original prints and rare books from the artist, and be able to ask a few live questions to Yasuko.

A two-day traveling recess will be observed on March 29th and 30th to give participants plenty of time to relocate from Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa. Participants may choose to either spend an additional day photographing in Tokyo on the 29th, or to head south directly to start exploring Naha’s fascinating street life and culture!

DESCRIPTION (GREG GIRARD)

When making pictures at home or in a foreign place nostalgia can be a seductive drug. The notion that things were somehow better/more interesting in the past, that we’ve arrived too late and are condemned to the predictability of now. This is nonsense. No matter how much we might yearn for an earlier time, all we have to work with is Now. It’s all we’ve ever had. Of course one can stage pictures, recreate an era, construct a gone world. But for the purposes of our workshop in Tokyo and Okinawa we will be photographing the world as we find it in these two places with their vastly different histories and separate daily realities. However well we might know these two places, or however new they might be to us, each of us as photographers will be on our own unique journey to register this very particular here and now in which we find ourselves.

Greg Girard will present work from his thirty-year career living in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai, photographing across Asia from the 1970s until now. He will discuss the approaches that have served in producing books like City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City, Phantom Shanghai, Snack Sakura and other bodies of work about places where in one way or another Girard began photographing the here and now, first as an “outsider” and later as a long-term resident.

Participants will present portfolios of current work for review, and photograph an assignment in Tokyo and Okinawa. A JRNL style newsprint publication featuring edits of the new work participants created during the workshop will be published by FotoFilmic. Participants will each be mailed a free hard copy.

Cover images © Top: Greg Girard. From the book JAL, 1976-1988. Bottom: Greg Girard. From the book “Snack Sakura” (Kominek, 2025).

SCHEDULE

[subject to change]
Thursday March 26 [Tokyo]
Morning: Introduction, participants’ portfolio reviews + assignment presentation/discussion
Afternoon: participants’ portfolio reviews cont.
Evening: participants start photographing for their assignment

Friday March 27 [Tokyo]
Morning: Greg Girard lecture
Afternoon: 1:1 individual meetings with Greg Girard (30 minutes per participant, Group A)
Afternoon/evening: participants continue photographing for their assignment

Saturday March 28 [Tokyo]
Morning: 1:1 individual meetings with Greg Girard continue (30 minutes per participant, Group B)
Participants continue photographing for their assignment
Afternoon: Assignment group review
Evening: participants continue photographing for their assignment

Sunday March 29 + Monday March 30 [Tokyo -> Naha, Okinawa]
Traveling from Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa

Tuesday March 31 [Naha, Okinawa]
Morning: Greg Girard lecture
Afternoon: 1:1 individual meetings with Greg Girard (30 minutes per participant, Group A)
Afternoon/evening: participants continue photographing for their assignment

Wednesday April 1 [Naha, Okinawa]
Morning: 1:1 individual meetings with Greg Girard continue (30 minutes per participant, Group B)
Afternoon/Evening: participants continue photographing for their assignment

Thursday April 2 [Naha, Okinawa]
Morning: final assignment group review + final editing session for the FotoFilmic newsprint publication
Afternoon: Yasuko Tomatsu in conversation with Greg Girard (talk + studio visit)
Evening: Farewell drinks

Cover images © Top: Greg Girard. From the book JAL, 1976-1988 (Kominek, 2023). Bottom:  Greg Girard. From the book Snack Sakura (Kominek, 2025).

ABOUT GREG GIRARD: 

Greg Girard is a Canadian photographer who has spent much of his career in Asia. His work has examined the social and physical transformations in Asia, especially in its largest cities, for more than four decades. He is the author of several photographic books. City of Darkness Revisited, published 2014, revives an early collaboration with co-author Ian Lambot, and updates their influential book, City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City (Watermark, 1993). Based in Shanghai between 1998 and 2011, his photographic monograph, Phantom Shanghai (Magenta, Toronto, 2007), with a foreword by novelist William Gibson, looks at the rapid and at times violent changes in China’s largest city as Shanghai raced to remake itself at the beginning of the 21^st Century. Other recent titles include JAL 76-88 (Kominek, Berlin), Tokyo-Yokosuka 1976-1983, (Magenta, Toronto, 2019), Hotel Okinawa, (The Velvet Cell, Osaka, 2017); Under Vancouver 1972-1982 (Magenta, Toronto, 2017); Hanoi Calling (Magenta, Toronto, 2010); and In the Near Distance (Kominek, Berlin, 2010), a book of early photographs made in Asia and North America between 1973 and 1986. The International Centre of Photography in New York featured his series “Half the Surface of the World”, a survey of US military bases and their host communities in Asia, in 2012. His work is in the collection of National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Vancouver Art Gallery, M+ Museum Hong Kong, and other public and private collections. National Geographic Magazine in a special issue in 2022 cited his photograph from a story on gene editing, titled ‘The DNA Revolution’, as one of this century’s ‘100 best photos’. He is represented by Monte Clark Gallery, North America; WKM Gallery, Hong Kong; and Kominek Gallery, Berlin.

https://www.greggirard.com/
@gregforaday