Japanese artist Julie Watai’s debut photo collection, Samurai Girl is a psychedelic and playful compilation of manga-inspired photography. Through a stunning fusion of subcultural images, manga and video game graphics, the Tokyo-based fashion photographer and ex-pop idol profoundly immortalises Japanese culture in all its richness, folly and abstractions.

Watai’s photographs and designs have already reached cult status in Tokyo and the renowned photographer has been the focus of numerous publications and documentaries from around the world including a feature by Vice’s The Creator’s Project. This collection showcases over one-hundred such photographs and graphics that have launched this extraordinary artist to international acclaim.

“Julie Watai is a photographer and contemporary artist whose acid-bright, digitized works draw heavily on the worlds of Japanese manga, anime, and otaku culture. Distorted-yet-realistic, Watai combines images from pop cultural fantasies — from gun-slinging anime girls, to cyborgs, to “kawaii” dolls — with 3D (real-world) imagery, creating a glitch-type portraiture that excites and overloads the imagination.” – Beautiful Decay