D. J. Hinman is an avid amateur devotee of black-and-white film photography. In the late 1990s while living in New York, he developed his skills in photography through evening and weekend courses at the International Center for Photography (ICP). Since that time he has honed his skills in documentary and street photography while living in New York and Tokyo, and while exploring local cultures in Japan and throughout East and Southeast Asia. His most recent work focuses on his experiences in Nepal. While shooting in the field, whether at home or abroad, he typically goes out on his own, on foot as much as possible, so that he can give free rein to his inner photographer’s voice and can follow wherever his camera leads. His black-and-white photographs contain strong elements from the NYC style of photography – high contrast and sometimes grainy or slightly blurred images – but his work has been tempered by his many years of exposure to the distinctive style of Japanese photography, with its softer tonal range and minimalist composition. He shoots exclusively in black-and-white, develops his own film, and prints the photographs himself in the darkroom on silver-gelatin paper. A transplanted Midwesterner from Iowa via New York, D. J. Hinman has lived in Japan for the last 20 years.