My photo images are of what I see all around us, with interest, affection, and sense of awe toward the indelible beauty there before the eye in various conditions. And sometime humor is the engagement photographed at the moment of recognition. I hope my photos shared here with you conjure feelings I felt when I saw them, and more.
- Kaz Tsuruta
About Kaz
Kaz Tsuruta ventured to San Francisco upon graduation from Rikkio St. Paul University in Japan, ostensibly on a visit to this city renown world over. On that initial visit he enrolled in an MA program at San Francisco State College (now University) in Economics, his undergraduate major. However, as he tells it, one day in the early part of his first semester, he looked out the window of his classroom and noticed the interesting people headed into the Creative Arts building, whose appeal drew him to explore beyond the major he found himself at pains to subject himself here, as had he back home in Tokyo under family pressure. So he followed the excitement that pulled him out of an MA in Economics and into Creative Arts where he would find his camera more fully, and a San Francisco milieu that welcomed him without the requirement of an MA degree. From there it truly is history.
Two years after arriving in San Francisco, Kaz’s photography was already being recognized in an article by Judy Vaughn in the San Francisco Chronicle, which led to a gallery showing. Three years later after arrival in San Francisco, he found love and marriage, also independent of traditional and family expectations, and he and his wife have raised their four children in this famed city.
Kaz made his life career as chief photographer of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Below, you see Kaz described in the Asian, the museum magazine, as having “made a lifelong career of staying out of the public eye—while showing us where to look.”
Right out of the annals of artists imbued more with creative passion than with the selling of self, Kaz has quietly gone about the business of creating breath-taking photographs. Mindful, however, of Kaz’s own personal reserve, the Asian Art Museum proclaimed:
“We’re proud to celebrate Kaz Tsuruta with an exhibition of his photography in Vinson Gallery (February 25-March 22, 2015). On Location: Kaz Tsuruta, Museum Photography which range from Tsuruta’s exquisite museum work to more personal pieces, such as his Mongolian portraits.” (Asian, 2015)
And while he has made a career as a museum photographer at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Kaz also photographed for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, specifically the Legion of Honor and the De Young Museums. His selected photographs are throughout and donning the spectacular front and back covers of the Fine Arts Museums’ special issue publication, New Look to Now: French Haute Couture 1917-1987. Please see these photos in the Publication Collection.
On particular note, Kaz traveled with a team of the Salvation Army to EL Salvador in 1986, in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake there. His capture of the humanity efforts can be seen in his Quake Relief Collection. He has also captured care-giving in photos featured in publications of the Saint Francis Hospital, San Francisco.
Way before beginning his career at the Asian Art Museum, when working independent as freelance photographer, Kaz came to the attention of clients in high demanding areas, such as a music producer of internationally acclaimed jazz musicians, and as well clients in various fields, including a major San Francisco law firm, and a finance company, both of whom still call on Kaz for their annual holiday and company shots, respectively. His early freelance period attracted regular clientele that tapped his talents, which fed his growing family. Those clients remain yet with him for special occasion photographs. Moreover, his private assignments over the years continue to include photographing the art of private collectors.
When his wife, then professor at Mills College For Women in Oakland, California, asked him, by popular demand, to speak to her literature class about what he does with a camera that so communicates such poetic wonderment, Kaz had to be urged, as evinced when in kindly greeting the students, his first words confided, “I am more comfortable talking behind the camera than in front of the camera.”
Today, while Kaz is still sought out by aficionados of his photography, he is working on preparing books for publication: one that is timely and close to his heart brings an appreciative eye to grown folks having fun on Halloween night in San Francisco. Much of what I write here, Kaz, modest in bearing and personality, would never say himself; but more to the point, he truly does prefer to speak with his camera, thus communicate that way. On the following links provided, you will see almost like a retrospective, the life lived as the man with the camera.
-DT, Stanford PhD
© 2021 by Kaz Tsuruta Photography