Tatsuo Suzuki Breaks His Silence: ‘I Was Never a Fujifilm Photographer’

Back in February 2020, it was reported that Fujifilm dropped ambassador Tatsuo Suzuki over a promotional video the brand released, which prompted criticism of the Japanese photographer’s shooting style.

Suzuki has been compared to Bruce Gilden for his brash style of street photography, which involves running up to unsuspecting people to get a close photo, often with a flash. This is precisely what he was doing in a now-deleted video promoting the Fujifilm X100V. Editor’s Note: The video is still online.

At the time, viewers called Suzuki’s style “invasive, aggressive, and unethical.” Ultimately, the backlash saw Suzuki dropped as a Fujifilm X Photographer — or did it?

Suzuki Speaks Out

Suzuki has largely stayed quiet on the subject until this month, when he appeared on the Street Life podcast, an Australian show all about street photography — the first time he has spoken about it in an English forum.

“To make it clear, I was never a Fujifilm photographer in the first place,” Suzuki tells Street Life via an interpreter. “I was only there for the commercial. I would like to make that very, very clear.”

Suzuki tells Mark Davidson that he was invited by Fujifilm to appear in a video to promote the X100V, but was never a formal representative of the brand.

“The way my photo style was captured in the Fujifilm commercial, it wasn’t even how I photograph people in the first place,” Suzuki says. “When you go about taking photos that way, you can never get a proper shot.”

Suzuki says he never received a screening of the video before it was published, adding that he would have stopped it from going out had he seen it. He says his shooting style was “exaggerated” in the video, and it is not reality.

Suzuki says he tries to respect people on the street as much as possible and shies away from subjects who clearly don’t want to have their photo taken.

“There’s only been a handful of times I have been contacted to take photos down,” Suzuki says via an interpreter. “The subjects who felt uncomfortable were really respectful. There hasn’t been a moment of outrage.”

Suzuki says he waited this long to talk about the incident out of respect for the brand, noting that he was the sole Japanese representative present at the international campaign.

“I felt that I owed a lot to Fujifilm because out of all the photographers that were contacted for the promotional X100V series, I was the only Japanese photographer, and I felt I owed Fujifilm,” says Suzuki. “Fujifilm did not mean any ill intent when it published the advertisement.”

Following the controversy, Suzuki had a tough time as he found himself out of work, and no one was returning his calls. But he has since recovered from the incident: continuing to shoot, publishing books, and hosting exhibitions.

More of Suzuki’s work can be found his Instagram and website.