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Will Matsuda

@willfujiomatsuda

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ALL MY ROCK, TREE, CLOUD, AND STAR APPRECIATORS TAP IN!!

I spent the entire month of March chasing down metamorphic rocks, 20 million year old shellfish fossils, juniper trees, pine trees, the North Star, Perseus, plum blossoms, cherry blossoms, and more across the West Coast.

These photos are part of @natgeo’s Wonder Lessons, a series of backyard nature-study guides. One beautiful thing about making this nature guide was, in order to make accurate and successful pictures, I had to understand the processes happening around me. Things like planetary orbits, condensation, fossilization, volcanism, and tree speciation. So if anybody needs to know a rock, cloud, tree, or constellation...lmk

Editor: @1.800.sam by @willfujiomatsuda

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6 months ago

Lucid dreaming for @time

“The unconscious is exactly the hypothesis that we do not dream only when we are sleeping” –Jacques Lacan, from his seminar The Moment to Conclude, 1979

Been cliff diving into the swirling pools of my unconscious for the last year and a half so this was a fun one to explore through both cameraless and camera pictures. What is a DREAM? And what is AWAKE? Let’s find out together : )

Here’s a few along with some outtakes.

TY @miatoff @petergarritano @8.tomi.8

Photo editor: @kimbubello by @willfujiomatsuda

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2 months ago

Last week at the @hermes Winter Camp in Aspen ❄️❄️❄️ by @willfujiomatsuda

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3 years ago

We are pleased to announce that Hanafuda, @willfujiomatsuda first monograph, is now available for preorder, with copies shipping this winter. Link to preorder in bio.

Named after the traditional Japanese playing cards he learned from his grandmother during family gatherings in Hawaii, Hanafuda is a meditation on memory, family, and cultural inheritance, and the ways these shape our relationship to the natural world.

Organized into twelve suits corresponding to the months of the year, hanafuda cards depict flowers, animals, and landscapes in striking compositions of black, red, and white. Drawing on their imagery, as well as the visual traditions of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, Matsuda creates photographs that he describes as “imperfect translations” of his relationship to Japanese-American culture—a process of exploring his heritage while making space for something new, free from the need to be “correct.”

The photographs move between intimate portraits, quiet observations of the natural world, and landscapes that evoke the passage of time and the persistence of memory. Like the cards themselves, they suggest connections between people, plants, animals, and the changing seasons. Yet their relationship to hanafuda is associative rather than literal, shaped as much by Matsuda’s experiences and memories as by the imagery of the cards.

At the heart of the project is a desire to bridge distances—between generations, between cultures, and between past and present. In Matsuda’s photographs, landscape becomes not simply a setting, but a site of memory, ancestry, and belonging.

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Reserve your copy now and help support independent publishing. Each advance order includes a signed 4 × 6 print.

Plus! Matsuda’s earlier TIS publication, The Potter Becomes The Pot, from the TIS03 series, is available for 25% off when purchased with a Hanafuda preorder (discount automatically applied in cart). Free domestic shipping on combined orders, which will ship together.

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17 × 21 cm Linen hardcover with tipped-on image and silkscreen 64 pages 64 color images ISBN 9781943146451 by @willfujiomatsuda

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2 days ago

Venice today

CIAO!! by @willfujiomatsuda

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10 days ago

Three months in NY, three months in the new studio

Portraits by photo god @petergarritano by @willfujiomatsuda

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3 months ago

What Darwin saw in The Galápagos. For @theatlantic

Not sure it gets any better than this!

Editor: @allisonzauchadavis by @willfujiomatsuda

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4 months ago

Rachel at Coney Island

Dawn in the Redwoods by @willfujiomatsuda

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5 months ago

AN INTRO TO STARS AND CLOUDS FOR @natgeo

This is the type of work I wanted to do when I first started taking pictures in high school. I was 14, had art class homework, and I didn’t have a camera, so I took my school-issued laptop, opened Photobooth, and held it above my head to take photos of clouds in the park. This was kinda like that!

1. Cirrus cloud with ice rainbow in Joshua Tree
2. Orion (and me) in Death Valley
3. Stratus clouds in the Columbia Gorge
4. The North Star in Death Valley
5. Cirrus and superbloom in Death Valley
6. Cassiopeia and Perseus in Joshua Tree
7. Cumulus in Bandon, OR
8. Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, in Joshua Tree

These photos are part of @natgeo’s Wonder Lessons, a series of backyard nature-study guides.

Editor: @1.800.sam

And shout out to Larry O’Neill, Oregon’s chief climatologist, who helped me learn to identify all of these clouds. If anyone needs a cloud ID HMU!! by @willfujiomatsuda

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6 months ago

Ikebana en plein air

February 2026 by @willfujiomatsuda

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8 months ago

Photo for @molly.aitken’s story in @newyorkermag this week 🗽

Photo editor: @joimperio by @willfujiomatsuda

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8 months ago

Crater Lake
Hidden Forest Cave
Fort Rock by @willfujiomatsuda

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9 months ago