From fashion to lifestyle and portraiture, Kumi Saito, a Japanese photographer based in London, photographed a wide range and variety of different subjects.

Although she worked mainly for Japanese magazines, she also took pictures for London brands and shops as a house photographer. Lanka was one of her clients and she often took pictures of cakes for their catalogs and websites.

All the photographs in this book were taken inside the shop, not in the photographic studio. She would bring in a set of equipment such as stands, lights, and screens to set up a simple studio in a corner of the shop; and photograph freshly made cakes as they were brought up from the basement kitchen. Kumi not only saw the angle, colour and reflection on the surface, but she also paid close attention to the lighting in order to convey the taste of the cake.

“I'm never an artistic photographer, but it would be nice to have a photographer who can surely capture the subject in the best possible way,” said Kumi, but her photos have an artistic mood that makes you want to put them on a postcard.

She passed away in December 2020 from cancer.

Book Details
Publisher: Parsnips Archive
Language: English
Paperback: Full colour 128 pages
Size: A5, 148x210mm
ISBN: 978-1-7395963-0-9
Published: 23.11.2022

Price: £12.95
Editorial: Parsnips Archive
Photographer: Kumi Saito