About Masahiro Hiroike

Photographer Masahiro Hiroike

Masahiro Hiroike is a photographer born in 1962 in Tottori Prefecture, Japan. He encountered early computers at Hiroshima University and spent over 30 years as a systems engineer, involved in robot and CAD development. His development of a photo display program sparked his serious interest in photography, and in 2020, he won an award at the Sony World Photography Awards, considered the world's largest photography awards, leading him to become a full-time photographer.

In 2023, he was selected as the winner of the Dutch photo contest "LensCulture Critics' Choice" by Darius Himes, the international photography director of the auction house "Christie's," and has since held solo exhibitions at museums in Japan and Poland. In 2024, he debuted as a contributor to the "Yamakei Calendar," which has a 90-year history, and was recognized as a leading landscape photographer in Japan. In 2025, he served as a judge for the Landscape category of the PSA (Photographic Society of America).

The fundamental theme of Hiroike's creative work is the universal question, "What is beauty?" He explores this question scientifically and philosophically from the perspective of an engineer. To this end, he creates two contrasting works: "landscape photography" based on logic (consciousness) and "surrealism" based on sensibility (unconsciousness).

In landscape photography, against the backdrop of a deep connection with nature, he expresses Japan's unique nature and landscapes through the uniquely Japanese aesthetics of "transience" and "wabi-sabi."

Surrealism, an art movement born 100 years ago, seeks to depict a "super-real" world by shedding a new light on reality through the unconscious. Hiroike, with his deep philosophy of photography and art, and scientific considerations backed by over 30 years of experience as a systems engineer, has proposed "digital photographic surrealism," redefining surrealism through the characteristics of digital cameras, and "action photography," which actively incorporates physicality and chance into photography, fixing it as a "trajectory of action."

In 2025, I was selected as one of 15 members, and the only digital camera photographer from the world, to join "Atelier Quindici(15)", an international contemporary art project fully funded by the Italian Art Promotion Association and based at the Palazzo Zagli in Venice.

[Awards]

2020 Sony World Photography Awards 2020　Professional “Natural World and Wildlife” 2nd

2023 LensCulture Critics‘ Choice 2023　winner (Selected by Christie’s Darius Himes)

Please see [AWARD] for details.

【exhibition】

2021 Solo Exhibition Yonago City Museum of Art "QUEST-Quest for Beauty"

2023 Special exhibition at the Municipal Museum of Jelenia Gora, Poland

Please see [EXHIBITION] for details.

[Publishing]

December 2019 Photobook "QUEST Vol. 1" published by Imai Publishing

July 2020 Published the photo book "HIME BOTARU" from Chiisana Imai

[Media Appearance]