Sukita to Receive Abbey Road Music Photography Lifetime Award
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- Masayoshi Sukita will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's Abbey Road Music Photography Awards, with the ceremony set for September 24 in London.
- Sukita is best known for his 44-year collaboration with David Bowie — including shooting the iconic 1977 'Heroes' album cover — and also photographed Iggy Pop, Marc Bolan, Joe Strummer, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and David Sylvian.
- Born in Kyushu, Japan, in 1938, Sukita moved to Tokyo in 1965, became a freelance photographer in 1970, and photographed Jimi Hendrix in New York in the months before Hendrix's death; he met Bowie in London in 1972.
- David Bailey received the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award in 2025, making Sukita the second recipient in the award's history.
- This year's Abbey Road Music Photography Awards received over 24,500 submissions from 40 countries — a 25 percent increase over last year's entries.
- The judging panel is led by photographer Rankin and includes Nile Rodgers, Raye, Damiano David, Platon, Hikaru Utada, and others across music and visual culture.
- The awards were launched in 2022 and now anchor the Abbey Road Music Photography Accelerator, whose recent Music Photography Festival took place in New York City in May 2026.
Why it matters: With submissions up 25% to over 24,500 entries from 40 countries, the Abbey Road Music Photography Awards are scaling rapidly — and honoring Sukita, the photographer behind Bowie's 1977 'Heroes' cover, just one year after David Bailey's inaugural award cements the ceremony's standing in music visual culture.
