Legendary Japanese photographer Masayoshi Sukita has been announced as this year's Lifetime Achievement award winner in the 2026 Abbey Road Music Photography Awards.
Sukita is best known for his work photographing David Bowie, and famously shot the iconic cover photograph for Bowie’s 1977 album, Heroes. Sukita follows David Bailey CBE, who received the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award in 2025.
Speaking about receiving the award, Sukita said, “It is a big honour for me to receive the Lifetime Achievement award at the Abbey Road Music Photography Awards. I am very pleased to be a part of the history of photography. I will keep working on photography, and hope people will continue to enjoy my work.”
Abbey Road’s Director of Marketing & Creative, Mark Robertson, commented, “Masayoshi Sukita is one of the true visionaries of music photography. His images have not only documented some of the most influential artists of our time, they have helped define how we see them. Sukita created photographs that have become part of cultural history, with work that is timeless, intimate and instantly recognisable, demonstrating the power of photography to shape the identity of artists and entire eras.
“His influence and legacy continue to inspire across music, fashion and visual culture. We are honoured to celebrate Masayoshi Sukita with the Lifetime Achievement award at this year’s Abbey Road Music Photography Awards, recognising a lifetime spent elevating music photography into an art form.”
Photographer Masayoshi Sukita (aka Sukita) is the 2026 recipient of the Abbey Road Music Photography Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award.
Masayoshi Sukita was born in 1938 in a small coal-mining town in the north region of Kyushu, Japan. His father was killed on the front line in China during World War II. Though he died when he was just seven, Sukita has vivid memories of his father taking photographs.
When he was a child, Sukita’s uncle would take him to the cinema, an experience that would influence him throughout his life. He credits film and music for teaching him expression in his photography.
Between 1970 and 1971 he visited New York frequently, drawn by its subculture, especially the mix of art, film, and music that surrounded Andy Warhol. In New York he photographed Jimi Hendrix in the months before his death.
The music and culture of London also attracted Sukita in the early Seventies, where he would meet and photograph T-Rex’s Marc Bolan.
Marc Bolan of T-Rex as photographed by Sukita in 1972.
In 1972, Sukita met David Bowie in London for the first time. Sukita admired Bowie’s innovative performance style and related to his cinematic influences, so he secured a meeting to present his portfolio to Bowie's then manager, Tony Defries.
The reaction was overwhelmingly positive, and a portrait session with Bowie was arranged. This photo-shoot, in the summer of 1972, began a 40-year-plus collaboration between the two artists. Sukita was there to welcome Bowie upon his arrival to Japan in 1973, and accompanied him on numerous subsequent visits. Over the years Sukita and Bowie explored cities, relaxed with friends, and attended Iggy Pop’s birthday party.
Iggy Pop live by Sukita.
In April 1977, Sukita took the iconic cover shoot for Bowie’s Heroes album at Hasajuku Studios in Tokyo, Japan – the image is widely known as Sukita’s most famous photograph of Bowie. The picture is a nod to the painting Roquairol by the German artist Erick Heckel, as was the image by photographer Andy Kent that adorned the cover of Iggy Pop’s 1977 album The Idiot.
Sukita’s image would later feature on another Bowie album cover – 2013’s The Next Day, on which it was overlaid with a central white square box that covered all of Bowie’s face and featured the album title in the middle. In 2017 the Heroes album cover image featured as one of a set of six Royal Mail GB commemorative stamps that were brought out to honour Bowie after his passing in January 2016.
As well as his long-term association with Bowie, Sukita also famously photographed many other musicians including former Japan lead singer David Sylvian, the Yellow Magic Orchestra, Iggy Pop, Marc Bolan and his band T-Rex and The Clash’s Joe Strummer.
Mick Ronson and David Bowie in concert in Japan, 1973.
To find out more about the Abbey Road Music Photography Awards go to abbeyroadmusicphotographyawards.com
