George Nobechi (b. 1980) is a Tokyo-born photographer, visual artist, and writer whose work explores the complexities of cultural identity and the emotional terrain of isolation. Raised between Japan and Canada, he draws on a dual perspective—being both an insider and outsider in each—to craft quiet, introspective images rooted in memory and longing.
Nobechi gave up a promising career in finance in New York City in 2015 when he encountered Sam Abell at a photography workshop in New Mexico. Abell saw talent in Nobechi’s sensibility and encouraged him to pursue a career in photography.
Nobechi’s breakout series of windows photographs, Here.Still., earned a Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 award in 2017 and was named Best Landscape Series in PDN’s The Curator awards, among numerous other awards. He made his solo show debut with the series at the Jackson Dinsdale Art Center in Nebraska, and the work was later exhibited in Texas, Germany, Tokyo, and New York, including at Photoville in 2020.
In 2021, he received a second Critical Mass Top 50 award, this time for his series The Japan I Had Not Seen, about the stories he encountered in his childhood in Japan. In 2022, he premiered large-scale washi works in his solo exhibition Eastern Light, Western Wind at the Frederick Harris Gallery in Tokyo. A 2023 solo exhibition at Fujifilm Square titled Roads to Denali, about a road trip through the North American Northwest that his Canadian father had loved, led to a 4-month long solo show at the Canadian Embassy’s Prince Takamado Gallery. That exhibition, Yamabiko | Echo, marked the 95th anniversary of Canada–Japan relations. He also debuted Phoenix Rises, a project on unique volcanic formations in his hometown, at the Hiroshi Senju Museum in Karuizawa, among his 18 solo shows to-date.
In 2024, he was invited to exhibit in WONDER Mt. FUJI at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (TOP Museum), Japan’s most important photographic museum. Curator Naoko Ohta likened his sensibility to that of Robert Frank, praising his ability to “bring a sense of wonder to photographs of daily life.”
Nobechi is also a community builder. He founded the Evenings with the Masters® speaker series during the pandemic, raising $70,000 for charity, and launched a photo festival in Japan in 2022, now in its 3rd year.
His work has been featured in The Japan Times, Newsweek Japan, Asahi TV, and more, and is held in collections including the Center for Creative Photography (University of Arizona), Tucson Medical Center, and the Canadian Embassy to Japan. He is also a guest instructor and lecturer at the Los Angeles Center of Photography and Blenheim Park, Maine.
He is at work on his first monograph due in 2026 at his home in the mountains of Nagano, Japan.