In 1992, Dai Nippon Printing, the major Japanese printing and publishing house founded in 1876, decided to assemble an important collection representative of Japanese photography since 1945 for the Maison Européenne de la Photographie.

Its first acquisition was a series of photographs of Nagasaki taken in 1962 by Shomei Tomatsu, a major post-war Japanese photographer. The series 11:02 Nagasaki, his best-known work worldwide, includes the picture of a watch stopped at the exact time of the bomb's impact on 9th August 1945 and is symbolic of the chaos into which Japan was plunged at the time. Another important figure is Daido Moriyama, whose blurred, grainy or violently contrasting pictures are a definitive departure from realism. For him, photography is a means of expression rather than a tool for communication. Nobuyoshi Araki, meanwhile, is interested in the proliferation of images in contemporary society. His work is an integral part of his life, reflecting his every move and gesture. The series Sentimental Journey is a photographic novel of his honeymoon which includes ordinary, day-to-day scenes with his wife.

The work of these three major photographers, plus contributions by Eikoh Hosoë, Ikko Narahara and Masahisa Fukase, forms the touchstone of an original and resolutely contemporary collection currently containing more than three hundred original prints.