Welcome To My World

Lina Takeuchi is a fashion and commercial photographer.

In this age of digital cameras and smartphones, photographers are a dime a dozen, while true artists are rarer than ever. Art is reserved for the select few that have a genuine gift for communication and something worth saying. Lina Takeuchi is one of these gifted few and she speaks her own language through the lens of her camera.

She was born in the most populous as well as one of the most influential cities in the world; Tokyo. The influence of the city is evident in her work. At the impressionable age of 16, she moved to a mountainous rural California town. En route to California in the space of a 12 hour flight, she was reduced to near muteness to her surprise. Confronted with the difficulties of adapting to a new language and culture, she turned to photography as her means of communication. A young woman in her formative years, this unexpected turn provided the motivation to delve into the arts as she cultivated new opinions and ideas, and a talent for expressing them. 

After high school, she moved to San Francisco and completed her studies in Photography at the Academy of Art University. After completing the degree, she returned to Tokyo and was quickly employed at a photography studio, where she earned the opportunity to learn about the real world of photographers for the next three years. In the two years following, Lina worked as a freelance assistant to focus on her own work as a freelance photographer.

Takeuchi approaches her work with a unique duality; at times her work is soft -  warm and organic like the natural settings of a small town American life, and at other times her work is cool - muted and calculated like the orderly metropolis in which she was born. This conflict makes Takeuchi’s work captivating; her audience never knows where she’ll take them next.

Her work is primarily concerned with the interpretation of beauty. She draws on her exposure to beauty in two very different cultures and chooses specific subjects, settings, and exposures that challenge the audience’s ideas about what is beautiful. As a fashion photographer she strikes a delicate balance between commercial and artistic; her ability to satisfy the needs of consumers while quietly inserting her own commentary is what makes her a success in the industry.

Photography may be Takeuchi’s second language, but it is clearly her first love.

Lina currently works as a freelance photographer in New York City.