It can be a spotty old world being an editorial portrait photographer in Tokyo, Japan. Some weeks there are photography assignments a plenty, and some weeks the diary is spotless clean. Recently, thankfully, it has been busy, but once again I apologise for the lack of posts on here.

Last week saw my portrait of Yayoi Kusama, Japanese artist (read her biography here), run in The Times of London newspaper. It’d been a last minute organised shoot, all set up the night before the shoot was to take place. And as I was to latterly find out the photo shoot was only given the go-ahead after Yayoi Kusama had been shown a portrait I’d shot of her a few years previously, and thankfully she’d approved it. (See the full set of my portrait photographs of Yayoi Kusama here.)

Yayoi Kusama, Tokyo, Japan. – from the latest portrait shoot. ©Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert 2012, all rights reserved.

As per my first portrait shoot with Yayoi Kusama, it took place at her studio building in Tokyo. A nice concrete block of a place, in a nice way, which inside is the HQ of Kusama’s business empire. Within the building, through the red door, there are her 9 staff working away at computers and fussing over the artist herself in her red dress and red wig. The studio where Kusama does her art, is downstairs, and I’m told she paints there each day from noon onwards for 8 hours or so. An industrious woman and an industrious building.

On both occasions I’ve now met Kusama I’ve found her to be generous with her time, for the interview, with signing books for the visiting journalists, and with posing for images. As I had a nice portrait, one I was happy with, of her against a backdrop of one of her paintings from my previous shoot, this time I wished to try and get something different. Kusama is old though, and slightly frail, so there isn’t much scope for moving around or going places, so backdrops of paintings seem to be the only option. But this time I pushed slightly and asked if I could photograph her at work, and nicely she agreed. So for a few minutes she continued working on a canvas which was not yet complete, and I got my image, whilst being watched by the staff, her agent, journalist etc. Here’s me at work, a shot from the journalists (seemingly broken and out of focus) iPhone camera.

And here, below, is how the image ran in the paper. Not the best use of a photo sadly, or what I’d hoped for.

©The Times/News International.

See the full set of my portrait photographs of Yayoi Kusama here.

The portrait shoot was organised for the paper as Kusama currently has a major retrospective exhibition of her work open at the Tate Modern gallery in London. The show is now open, and is on until 5th June, and you can see some images of it here in The Guardian and here on the BBC. I recommend you pop along and see it.

And a little Tate video here: