Tsuka: An Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese Photography
Risaku Suzuki
Kazuma Obara
Tomoki ImaiKenji Chiga
Mayumi Hosokura
Chikako Enomoto
Hiroshi Hatate
Daisuke Morishita
Mayumi Suzuki
Hajime Kimura
Yusuke Yamatani
Go Itami
Yoshinori Mizutani
Asako Narahashi
Shingo Kanazawa
Yuji Hamada
Hiroyuki Takenouchi
Hiromi Kakimoto
Yoshikatsu Fujii
Masako Tomiya
Kosuke Okahara
Keiko Nomura
Yasutaka Kojima

www.tsukaproject.com

a_tone_ment
An Essay by Curator Dr. Kristian Häggblom

Out the back of Ueno Park, beyond the museums, the zoo, Tokyo University,
several temples and beside the pond, one can find a stone monolith, a ‘tsuka’for sewing needles. The monument was donated and erected by local seamstresses’ to commemorate the many sewing needles that have worn out andhence been discarded. At the lower levels of the monolith the base sits upon amound of dirt that is regularly tended to and swept of stray stones and litter.
Whether there are actual sewing needles buried here only the original seamstress and government officialdom know.
‘Tsuka’ is an ancient and complex Japanese term that has several meanings.
Its simplest and most used meaning in contemporary language refers to amound or hill, a pile of dirt. This mound of heaped earth is not a natural formation but rather created with intent and purpose. The physical piling act isusually associated with burial and the subsequent entombment is conducted
for the purposes of worship and/or mourning.
Another more complex and layered meaning for this word refers to themound as a structure that acts as an ‘atonement tombstone’ for animals
or objects that humans have thrown away or treated harshly for their own
purposes – and often gain. These sites dot the landscape of Japan and act asphysical totems and metaphoric signifiers for both empathy, alleviation andpossible subsequent atonement. Tsuka therefore act as a milestone between‘this world’ and ‘the after world’ – a physical space to project invisible humanaspirations, hopes and guilt.
This project uses tsuka monuments and ideas associated with them as thestarting point for visual investigations by a selection of contemporary Japanese artists who use photography, video and the photobook. The image-makers working on this project are making both literal and lateral responses,
illustrating ideas that are closely or loosely connected with the overall curatorial conceptual framework and ultimately address the question:
Can the process of taking, making and exhibiting photographs act as a formof tsuka?

Tsuka is a concept I first learnt about while living and working in Japan in2000 from the wonderful yet disturbing Alex Kerr book Dogs and Demons:Tales from the Dark Side of Japan (2001). This complex Japanese concept has
since been latent in my mind and influenced much of my own photography
and curatorial practice. The concept has been extended further through anappreciation of Japanese photography and its culture and inspired by otherreadings, ranging from Japanese ‘junbungaku’ novels from authors such as
Yukio Mishima and Osamu Dazai, as well as important photography texts
translated in Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers edited by Ivan
Vartanian, Akihiro Hatanaka and Yutaka Kambayashi (2006), the classic
cinema of Yasujiro Ozu and more recently Hirokazu Kore-eda, and of course,
Haruki Murakami.
This catalogue is not intended to describe each artist’s work and their specificrelation to the overarching theme of homage and atonement. Rather, I would
like to conjure a feeling, one like that of standing at the Hatchiko statue outside Shibuya station and meeting somebody for the first time. Unlike stone
statues, the photographic prints, projections and books in this exhibition arecollected as objects of revelry.
Beyond its incarnation as an exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, the project attempts to present and explore imagery and ideas fromthe complex and often impenetrable ‘photoland’ of Japan. The project acts as
a platform for further insight and understanding of a much respected and,dare I say, globally revered photographic culture. The Tsuka Project delves
into the floating world of Japanese photography; its concepts, drive, weightand is an ongoing and fluid narrative.

Invitation to Tsuka
An introduction by CCP Director Naomi Cass

Artist, curator and academic Kristian Häggblom has gathered a remarkableselection of 23 Japanese artists around the theme of Tsuka.
Häggblom is rather like the witness figure in a Renaissance painting—he isboth part of the picture of contemporary Japanese photography and the one
who turns to us and beckons—opening this rich and complex world to CCP
audiences and beyond. As an Australian steeped in Japanese culture, Häggblom follows in a long history of engagement with Japanese visual art, craft,music, film and design.
Tsuka: An Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese Photography is a beautifully
calibrated project, it is an exhibition, a catalogue and website which together
extend beyond CCP in place and time.
Sweeping in their technologies, modes of address and genres: from traditional analogue photography, to video and photobooks, this exhibition shoulders
a hugely ambitious project: to communicate a knowing worms eye view ofcurrent Japanese practice, deftly gathered around the theme.
CCP has worked with Häggblom over many years, this being his third project focussing on Japanese photography. Tsuka: An Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese Photography is a generous and illuminating project for which
we are grateful.
I thank the participating artists, Risaku Suzuki, Kazuma Obara, Tomoki
Imai, Kenji Chiga, Mayumi Hosokura, Chikako Enomoto, Hiroshi Hatate,
Daisuke Morishita, Mayumi Suzuki, Hajime Kimura, Yusuke Yamatani, Go
Itami, Yoshinori Mizutani, Asako Narahashi, Shingo Kanazawa, Yuji Hamada, Hiroyuki Takenouchi, Hiromi Kakimoto, Yoshikatsu Fujii, Masako Tomiya, Kosuke Okahara, Keiko Nomura and Yasutaka Kojima. I recognise theJapanese gallerists who are participating through their artists. I acknowledge
The Japan Foundation, Sydney for financial assistance, and those who havegenerously contributed to this project in myriad ways.
With compassion and rigour Häggblom invites us to consider the concept oftsuka and more, through immersion in these remarkable works.

Kyozuka, Kumano
Risaku Suzuki

Title of Work: Kyozuka, Kumano
Year: 2018
Medium: Chromogenic Contact Prints x 40 with 4 texts
Size of Work: 8x10”
Top Row
Tsuruginoyama Kyozuka #1 - #10
Second Row
Kumano-Shingu Kyozuka #1 - #10
Third Row
Sonae-zaki Kyozuka #1 - #10
Bottom Row
Nachi Kyozuka #1 - #10

For the Tsuka exhibition Risaku Suzuki has produced a new series of photographs in responseto the themes investigated. Risaku made works at the Kyozuka of Tsuruginoyama, Kumano-Shingu, Sone-zaki and Nachi in Kumano, Japan. This region is very familiar to the artistand his most well-known and sublime work, KUMANO, was also made amongst these stunning landscapes and communities. The new series is titled Kyozuka, Kumano and the photographs were made with a large-format 8x10” camera are exhibited as exquisitely detailed
contact prints.

Kyōzuka
An Essay by D. Max Moerman

Kyōzuka or sutra mounds, mark the sites of human intervention in which
Buddhist scriptures, images, and ritual implements have been buried in theearth to preserve the teachings through an anticipated age of decline and disappearance and to pray for the future salvation of oneself and others. Fromthe eleventh through the fifteenth centuries, thousands of kyōzuka wereconstructed at temples, shrines, and sacred mountains throughout Japan. In
the Kumano region of southern Wakayama Prefecture - an ancient landscapeof this and the other world, a legendary realm of death and rebirth - kyōzuka
mark the sites of ritual practice and religious aspiration: the three shrines ofKumano, known as Hongū, Shingū, and Nachi, and the forested paths between them. As physical and spatial memorials of an earlier age, the sutra
mounds of Kumano serve as milestones of the pilgrim’s progress, landmarksof a buried past, and time capsules of a future yet to come.
The Tsuruginoyama kyōzuka takes its name from the Mountain of Swords,
a site of eternal suffering in the geography of Buddhist hells. Pilgrims passthis toponym along the Nakahechi route toward the Kumano Hongū shrine,
which represents the Pure Land of Amida Buddha.
The Kumano Shingū Shrine, identified with Yakushi, the Buddha of Healing,is located thirty-five kilometres south of the Hongū Shrine, where the Kumano River empties into the Pacific. The kyōzuka of the Shingū are clusteredaround Mount Kannokura, a rocky outcropping above the shrine, reachedby series of steep stone steps. The straw rope girding the rock mark it as thelocus of divine descent. A centre for Buddhist ascetics in the pre-modern period, Mount Kannokura remains the site of a major fire festival held annuallyin the lunar new year in which hundreds of local men undergo rites of purification, climb the holy mountain, ignite a sacred fire, and stream down thehillside with flaming pine torches from which villagers kindle their hearths.
Archaeological excavations at Mount Kannokura have unearthed hundredsof Buddhist texts, objects, and images buried in the sacred landscape. Elevenseparate kyōzuka were found to contain a total of one hundred and twenty-three copper sutra containers as well as stones inscribed with scriptural
passages. In addition to the texts embedded and inscribed in the terrain,
three hundred and eighty-three ritual implements, and seventy-nine images of the Buddhist pantheon of the Kumano shrines were buried at Mount
Kannokura.

The remains of some forty sutra mounds have been found at Sonae-zaki, anarea near the former site of the Kumano Hongū Shrine, which was located on the small island of Ōyunohara at the confluence of the Kumano andOtonashi rivers. The former site of the shrine, now absent of architecture
and overgrown with trees, remains only a place of memory. The route of
Kumano pilgrims to the Hongū Shrine was mapped onto the cosmology of
the Nine Levels of Rebirth in the Pure Land of Amida Buddha. Arriving at
the Hongū, where Amida was enshrined, was a thus a passage from death
to rebirth in which pilgrims reached their heavenly goal after wading acrossthe shallow waters to the other shore of paradise. Although the inscriptions
on the sutras and other objects buried at kyōzuka often speak to an anxiety
over the preservation of the Buddhist tradition until the advent of Miroku,
the Buddha of the Future, they also address more personal concerns about
the death and the afterlife on the individual. The sutra mounds of Kumano
signal such an overdetermined landscape and embody a form of memorialization neither singular nor settled.
The Kumano Nachi Shrine, located beside a one-hundred-and-seventy-meter waterfall at the headwaters of the Nachi River, is dedicated to Kannon,
the Bodhisattva of Compassion, whose island paradise is believed to lie inthe distant southern sea. Excavations of kyōzuka near the base of the Nachi
waterfall have discovered more than a thousand items. Notable among them
are ten small gilt bronze images of Kannon, three of Yakushi, two of Amida, and one of Miroku. Those who practiced austerities in Kumano mountains envisioned the topography as a three-dimensional Buddhist mandala.
Among the most remarkable objects unearthed from the Nachi kyōzuka
are cast bronze images comprising a complete Diamond Realm (Kongōkai )mandala dating to the twelfth century. The buried mandala consists of images of various buddhas and bodhisattvas, twenty-two images of the symbolic
forms of other deities, and forty-one ritual implements and altar tools. Other
excavated items include one hundred and fifty-three sutra containers, seventeen mirrors incised with images of Buddhist deities, three miniature stupas,
and thirty-nine stones inscribed with sutra passages. Beneath the visible
surface of Kumano’s landscape lay another invisible and subterranean world,a deeper strata of meaning, buried for nearly a thousand years.

Bikini Diaries
Kazuma Obara

Title of Work: Bikini Diaries
Year: 2018
Medium: Japanese Rice Paper Concertina Book
Size of Work: 1230 x 1830mm

The project Bikini Diaries documents the invisible victims of the nuclear testing in the regionof Bikini Atoll in 1954. Nine years after the tragic nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII, approximately 10,000 Japanese fishermen were exposed to nuclear fallout inthe Bikini Atoll region. However, modern Japanese history have only recognised 26 fishermen
as the victims of this nuclear test explosion. Those 10,000 fishermen had kept silent about thetheir plight in order to keep from causing social and personal unrest. Unofficially, they are labelled ‘hibakusha’ (explosion-affected people). Obara has thoroughly investigated this tragedy
and this project traces one of the victims’ memories and experiences that is a single narrativein a much larger ongoing project. By using expanded modes of documentary-making he has
attempted to reveal the invisible pain and history of these ignored victims. The work for the
Tsuka exhibition consists of his handmade book titled Bikini Diaries that is driven by a narrative that extends from actual events that involved fishermen removing pages about the Bikini
nuclear testing from their ship’s logs and diaries to erase the evidence of exposure. This photo book re-creates their erased memory, collected evidence and further explorations to pay
homage to the effected 10,000 fishermen and their families.

Semicircle Law
Tomoki Imai

Title of Work: Semicircle Law 2011-2018
Year: 2018
Medium: HD Video
Duration: 8:45 mins

After the disaster at Fukushima on March 11th, 2011, I climbed the mountains surrounding
the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant and photographed the landscapes leading towards theocean with the power plant as a continuous vanishing point in the frame. Many locations
were located using a compass as the subject was distant and on occasion invisible.
During the seven years of making this work, I also took pictures on my journey to the mountains and I have witnessed many changes to these charged landscapes, yet most aspects remained the same. For the Tsuka Project these photographs are edited into a detailed video,with a series of mountaineering-esque images included for context. The absence in thesevideos is also important.
Semicircle Law is made up of 41 images that I made during these climbs and in this ongoingproject.

HAPPN
Kenji Chiga

Title of Work: HAPPN
Year: 2016
Medium: HD Video
Duration: 3:40 mins

The light turns green.
I look right.
I look left.
I step out and move forward.
So many people walk past me.
No one looks this way.
I peer into their eyes and our eyes occasionally meet.
Pieces of litter found on the street are quite telling. Telling of the person who once owned thatabandoned fragment of something.
I feel that photographs are something similar to this.
It has been eight years since my move to Tokyo. In this city populated by 13.62 million people,
I still only have a small number of friends. Daily, I observe an entire universe of people, who go
unnoticed to each other. I observe them walking the streets ahead of me, on the same trains,and eating at the same restaurants. I can’t help but wonder:
Who are they?
What are their lives like?
What are they thinking?
One day I came across an app called “Happn”, that indicates and introduces other strangers
to me that are also members. I met a woman from France, a young man who is a dancer anda fashion student.
We met, we spoke and we shared our stories. I would not have met these people otherwise
although they all live very close to me. We must have crossed paths without realising countless times. There is still an entire universe of people I don’t know. My neighbours who are yetto have a face, name or voice… I think about them as I roam the streets of Tokyo. This work
acts as an acknowledgement to these invisible yet possible encounters.

KAZAN
Mayumi Hosokura

Title of Work: Untitled from the series KAZAN
Year: 2009-2011
Medium: Type C-Print
Size of Work: 800 x 1100mm
Edition: 3
Title of Work: Untitled from the series KAZAN
Year: 2009-2011
Medium: Type C-Print
Size of Work: 800 x 1100mm
Edition: 3
Title of Work: Line(Y) from the series Jubilee
Year: 2015
Medium: Type C-Print
Size of Work: 750 x 1000mm
Edition: 3
Title of Work: Dance (v10 times expanded EDM)
Year: 2017
Medium: HD Video with soundDuration: 7.30 mins

We stand in need of a new skin.
It could be something like fur; snake scales, the trichrome of a plant or luminous glass.
A new skin blurs the outline of each category, like how manipulation of one gene can createa tomato in which genes of a moth exist, or a sheep in which genes of a frog exist.
I am a woman but I could also be a man, an animal, a plant or non-living object at thesame time.
This new skin blurs the boundaries.
Men and women, human and animal, living object and non-living object,
new skin is a BODY HACK that expands “me” (or “you” ) who is (are) dreaming of thisimminent future.

Kaneyama: Portrait from the Villages
Chikako Enomoto

Title of Work: Kaneyama: Portrait from the Villages
Year: c1930 - 2016
Medium: Pigment Prints (Acrylic Wall Prints)
Size of Work: Dimensions Variable

Section One: Katsunosuke Tsunoda
Images in this section are reproduced by Niigata University, in an edition of 1 at 537 x 537mm.
Title: Women in traditional working clothes, Tamanashi
Year: c. 1953
Title of Work: My father working as a forest worker, Tamanashi
Year: c. 1953
Title of Work: An artisan and his family, Tamanashi
Year: c. 1953

Section Three: Chikako Enomoto
Images in this section are pigment acrylic prints at 515 x 728mm in an edition of 1
Title of Work: The Tadami River in summer
Year: 2016
Title of Work: Mr. N.T.’s farm in winterYear: 2016

Section Two: Kaneyama Town Board of Education
Images in this section are reproduced by Kaneyama Town Board of Education in an edition of 1 at 127 x 178mm
Title of Work: Kiri-Geta (wooden clogs) towers and craftspeople, Oshi
Year: c. 1935
Title of Work: Women from Kaneyama attending a training program at Aizu Sanson, Do-jo Vocational School,
Minami-Aizu Town
Year: 1942
Title of Work: Celebration for starting of sheep raising business encouraged by the government, Kawaguchi
Year: 1937
Title of Work: Hop-pickers working all night, Kawaguchi
Year: c.1960-1965
Title of Work: Workers of a pioneer trucking company who are running their business between Kaneyama andNiigata, Kawaguchi
Year: 1942
Title of Work: Teenage girls working at the Uwada Hydroelectric Power Plant construction site, Uwada
Year: c. 1936
Title of Work: A lumber company working in the wood with imported engine, place unknown
Year: c. 1932
Title of Work: Women working at a bridge construction site, Tamanashi
Year: c. 1933
Title of Work: Kabuki play performed by the community members, Takizawa
Year: c. 1930
Title of Work: A boy playing with a toy hunting gun, Yokota
Year: c. 1958
Title of Work: A tragic play performed by the community members during the wartime, Takizawa
Year: c. 1935
Title of Work: A hunter and a bear, Honna
Year: 1976
Title of Work: Bon dancing (dance to honour the spirits of one’s ancestors), Kawaguchi
Year: 1942
Title of Work: A tea break during a collaborative work, Yamairi
Year: c. 1957
Title of Work: Youth organization members on a makeshift stage they assembled, Kawaguchi
Year: 1949
Title of Work: Searching for Dojo fish (Japanese weather loach) in a small rice field, Oshio
Year: c. 1960

This project investigates the villages that make up Kaneyama, a small town in the Fukushimaregion of northeast Japan. It pays homage to the remote town and its’ communities and totheir connection with nature, each other and post-war society in Japan. The project draws on
several perspectives by including photographs from Katsunosuke Tsunoda (Section 1), theKaneyama Town Board of Education (Section 2) and my research photographs (Section 3).
Katsunosuke Tsunoda’s photographs provide the first perspective. Tsunoda, born in 1928 ina small village in Kaneyama, was a native amateur photographer who documented his town
and neighbours for more than 60 years. His photographs show the closeness between thephotographer, his community and its environs. Since 2013, Tsunoda’s photographic practicehas been studied and digitalised by the Niigata Regional Image Archive at Niigata University.

The second perspective is achieved through photographs collected by the image archiving
project undertaken by Kaneyama Town Board of Education. The Board is currently engaged
in a research and archiving project which focuses on vernacular photographs of the town andits people. This project is inspired by previous research projects instigated by Niigata University. These photographs reveal various micro-histories of the villages and community of
Kaneyama.
The third perspective is presented through the photographs I have made as a researcher. I am
currently a volunteer researcher at the Niigata Regional Image Archive and work on the image archiving project at the Town Board of Education in Kaneyama. I have studied Tsunoda’s
photographic practice since 2013, originally in my work at Niigata University and then since2016 in Kaneyama when I started working for the Board. Influenced by associated imagery, I
am recording the town of Kaneyama as it is today while I am both immersed in the community and also an outsider.

Tama-chan
Hiroshi Hatate

Title of Work: Tama-chan
Year: 2015 Medium: 35mm Slides (analogue and digital print reproductions) x 80

Unlike a solid tsuka monument, a photograph is a phenomenon from the past. But sometimes
I wonder if it really occurred. It might just be a conveniently formed figment of my artistic
desire, or even a mere accident completely divorced from any relativity. Whatever the truth
may be, images are produced incessantly. It evokes a sense of déjà vu. A sense within a sensation similar to a gentle mixture of convulsion and repulsion. Like photographs, memories andus all, Tama-chan’s existence is tenuous, but the fragility of existence is more evident in herlife of ongoing hardships – like a fading image in a slide-show.

asterisk
Daisuke Morishita

All works are B&W silver gelatin prints at 50 x 60cm mounted to archival board
Title of Work: asterisk #001 - #010
Year: 2015 - 2018
Edition: 5

The stance I choose to take when creating my work for the series asterisk is to become translucent. To avoid contaminating my art with my own intent, I try not to introduce any superfluous ideas… As part of the production process of shooting, developing, and printing, I
put my emotions and body to work at a brisk pace in order to bring my art into existence. At
times I feel as though I have become an engine emitting an invisible heat.

The Restoration Will
Mayumi Suzuki

All works are pigment ink-jet prints at 56 x 75mm
Title of Work: The Restoration Will #001 - #009
Year: 2015
Edition: Exhibition Edition

My parents went missing after the 3.11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in the Tōhoku
region of Japan. Our house was destroyed. It was not just the place where I grew up but also
my parent’s photography studio - a place for working and living where I have fond memories
of growing up. Where their studio once stood, there was nothing but a pile of rubble. I uncovered what remained of the darkroom, and then found my father’s camera, his portfolio,
and our family albums covered in mud and debris. At that moment I first began to regret not
taking over my parents’ photography studio.
With this in mind, one day I tried to take a landscape photograph with my father’s large-format camera and muddied lens. The image came out dark and blurry, like a view of the deceased and battered villages in the region. In making this image, I felt I could connect ourworld with the world beyond and many questions that I had been considering emerged: What
did he regret in his death? How would he look down on our new, reconstructed town if he
was alive? How does he feel that I have grown to become a photographer? Although impossible, I felt that by making these images I could have a conversation with my parents.
This project and subsequent photobook is dedicated to my father, Atsushi Sasaki, and mymother, Katsuko Sasaki, who were never found after March 11, 2011. I would also like tothank my sister, Hirono Sasaki and all friends and supporters from Onagawa.

Snowflakes Dog Man
Hajime Kimura

All 93 works are pigment ink-jet prints at various dimensions with 5 framed in an edition of 1
Title of Print Work: Snowflakes Dog Man
Year: 2016
Title of Projection Work: Snowflakes Dog Man
Medium: HD Video Slide-show
Duration: 2:34 mins
Year: 2016 - 2019

I had a complicated relationship with my father and hence had to stay away from him andmy family. However, in recording the end of his life I came to understand more about him
through his dog. By walking his dog on the daily walks around the local neighbourhood I
learnt more about him through visiting the places he had once frequented and talking to the
locals he would often chat with during his dog walks. Many memories and images in thisseries are from an album of photographs I had found inside his room and other places within
my own memories and those enacted by the dog walks.

Into the Light
Yusuke Yamatani

All works are framed LG prints at 264 x 1800mm in an edition of 8 made in 2017
Title of Work: Into the Light #005
Edition: 1/8
Title of Work: Into the Light #013
Edition: 1/8
Title of Work: Into the Light #052
Edition: 1/8
Title of Work: Into the Light #046
Edition: 1/8
Title of Work: Into the Light #051
Edition: 2/8
Title of Work: Into the Light #058
Edition: 1/8
Title of Work: Into the Light #042
Edition: 2/8
Title of Work: Into the Light #069
Edition: 1/8

I felt some fear when shooting these houses at midnight. The houses had a smell of death.
I felt that I wanted to transform the houses into boxes, like tombs. Like a tsuka monument,
they take on monumental meanings associated with death. However, these houses are inorganic, houses continue to change with the residents and can not be separated from humanactivities. The house is a memory, giving the residents the method of coexisting with nature,
the rhythm of life, the standard of various aesthetic sensibilities. When I looked back over thephotographs carefully, I felt I had captured a little of the occupant’s atmosphere from theirhome. This is where the title Into the Light came from.

photocopy
Go Itami

All works are pigment ink-jet prints at various sizes made in 2018 as exhibition prints
Title of Work: photocopy 1
Size: 4500 x 1524mm
Title of Work: photocopy 2
Size: 1118 x 1900mm
Title of Work: photocopy 3
Size: 914 x 1300mm
Title of Work: photocopy 4
Size: 1118 x 2800mm
Title of Work: photocopy 5
Size: 420 x 594mm

Itami’s photographs map the surfaces of Tokyo, mostly the constructed surfaces made up of
concrete, steel, plastic, glass, bitumen, wire and occasional wood are replications – photocopies. Sporadically these highly constructed compositions are punctuated by the inhabitants:
posing for a portrait or taking portraits themselves. photocopy the publication is not composed of one structural narrative, each copy of the book and its 68 images are ordered in adifferent sequence – no one copy being alike. This confusion is replicated in the installation ofthis work, where images are overlapped and framed by blocks of colour tone and borders. The
imagery becomes purposely overwhelming and requests the viewer to create their own photocopy – beyond the surface and framed by your own visual memories and devices.

Photobooks

Biographies
Risaku Suzuki was born in Wakayama Prefecture andMayumi Hosokura graduated from the Faculty of

Kazuma Obara is a photographer and book-maker

Chikako Enomoto graduated from the Faculty ofis currently based in Tokyo. He is a well-respected andestablished photographer in Japan and has published 24
photobook publications and exhibited widely in Japanand internationally. Suzuki is represented and works withTaka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo, Christophe Guye Galeriein Zurich, Nazareli Press, edition nord, SUPER LABO
and Punctum Times. His most prominent work renders
quintessential Japanese subjects - such as snowfall, cherry
blossoms and traditional festivals - in a manner that is atonce timeless and sublime.

who turned to journalistic image-making after resigningfrom his job in the financial industry. His work focuseson the hidden victims in society that suffer from war
and nuclear legacies. In 2014, he focused on victims of
WWII in Japan and his self-published photobook Silent
Histories was short-listed for Paris Photo/Aperture PhotoBook Award (2015). Continuing his pursuit of nuclear
issues, Obara has recently focused on victims of theChernobyl nuclear accident and his project Exposure
included images made with out-of-date Ukrainian film.
The project won the World Press Photo 2015 People
Choice Award and was published in 2017.

Tomoki Imai graduated from the Department of

Aesthetics and Art History from Tokyo University of theArts in 1998. He has published six books and his projects,
such as Mahiru – In the Middle of the Day (2001) and
LIGHT AND GRAVITY (2009), Imai captures everyday
scenes of interiors, forests, and suburbia at night that areserene but seem pregnant with possibilities. Semicircle
Law was produced by Imai trekking to mountain locations on the edge of the 30km ‘no-go-zone’ around the
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. He has exhibited extensively including a previous project curated by
Dr. Kristian Häggblom, Paper Bridges: a conferences offolding, at CAST in Tasmania.

Kenji Chiga was born in Shiga and is now based in To-

kyo. He studied photography in Osaka and worked as an
assistant in the fashion industry. Chiga received a GrandPrix at 1_WALL at the Guardian Garden Galley that is
known for awarding young photographers that have ongoing successful artistic careers. His dummy photobook
HAPPN was short-listed at the Kassel Dummy Awardand his work is in the collection of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts. Chiga’s projects question life,
work and pleasure in contemporary society and often arepresented across exhibition and book form.

Literature at Ritsumeikan University (2002) and studied
photography at the Nihon University, College of Art,
Tokyo (2015). Her work investigates surfaces both in thenatural environment and the surfaces of human skin andshe has worked in expanded documentary methodologies with Crystal Love Starlight. She published KAZAN
in 2012 with artbeat and in 2016 she published Transparency is the New Mystery with MACK Books. She isrepresented by G/P Gallery, Tokyo, and her work is in thecollection of the Foam Museum Collection.

Commerce and Management, Hitotsubashi University in2004 and received an M.A. from the Graduate School of
Language and Society, Hitotsubashi University in 2007.
She has lived and worked in Tokyo (until -2013), Niigata (a local coastal city of the Sea of Japan, 2013-2016)
and Kaneyama (a small mountain village in Fukushima
pre¬fecture, 2016- present). As a photographer, one ofEnom¬oto’s main subjects is our living environment.
In her ongoing project in Kaneyama, she is trying to
combine her academic research on the history of vernacular pho¬tography and her own photographic works.
As part of this project she has staged an exhibition, The
Portraits of Villages, both in Niigata and Kaneyama in
2017-2018.She was an assistant professor in the Facultyof Human¬ities, Niigata University from 2013 to 2016.
She is cur¬rently a research associate of the Niigata
Regional Image Archives, Niigata University and works
for the Kaneyama Board of Education. Enomoto has also
self-published On the Dunes, Niigata (2017), Anthropogenic Forms (2018). Her works are included in thecollection of Sakyu-kan, Niigata City.

Hiroshi Hatate is a Yokohama-based photographer thathas been working commercially in the fashion industry
for magazines such as Cut, H, Rockin’on, Musica Smartand Ryukotushin since returning from New York in thelate 90s. His personal work is an existential mediation
and attempt to answer no questions or fully elaborate
on his subject matter. The Tama-chan project continues
Hatate’s attitude to photography, it is both homage andtherapy for both him and his subject – dare we say muse:a woman who has been dealt unfair cards and knows
no other way to deal with them. Although he doesn’tcare much for publicity or fame, he has exhibited widely(and occasion under other names) and his photographic
practice is intrinsic to his existence. Presently, he is thesole-career of his elderly academic father and is an ongoing collaborator on projects with Dr. Kristian Häggblom.

Daisuke Morishita was born in Aichi and is now basedin Yokohama. He graduated from the Tokyo College of
Photography (2003) and is presently managing Calotype
Photoworks in Tokyo, which is both a darkroom andspace for exhibiting and conducting workshops. He has
had several solo exhibitions and self-published a numberof collectable zines including Vacuum Sky (2010), Shapesof Name (2012) and Fill up to the Edge (2014). In 2012 hevisited Australia and exhibited Shapes of Name at Wallflower Photomedia Gallery that was curated by Dr. Kristian Häggblom. He established and runs the publication
house asterisk books and published his first photobook of
the same title (2018).

Mayumi Suzuki was born in Onagawa, Miyagi Prefec-

ture, and is now based in Tokyo. She works as a visualstoryteller to find and create personal narratives. She
studied at Nihon University, College of Art Departmentof Photography and has been exhibiting and making
books since graduation. On March 11, 2011 her hometown Onagawa was destroyed by the 3.11 earthquake
and tsunami and her parents were never found. For The
Restoration Will Suzuki presents her family as she remembers them and not just a faceless figures – the project is
proof and homage of their lives. In 2016 she participatedin the workshop Photobook As Object run by Yumi Gotoand Jan Rosseel at Photography Reminders Strongholdin Tokyo and developed designed the book for the The
Restoration Will project.

Hajime Kimura was born in Chiba and is now basedin Germany and Tokyo. He studied architecture andanthropology and began his photographic career in 2006.
Kimura is a keen book maker and participated in theWorld Press Photo Joop Swart masterclass in Amsterdam
in 2012 and the following year was awarded 2nd prize at
the Vattenfall Photo Award in Berlin. In 2014 he won the
3rd prize of Kassel photobook dummy award in Germany, and published his first photobook titled Scrapbook(2015). Kimura has also published two handmade books:
In search of lost memories and Snowflakes Dog Man.

Yasutaka Kojima was born in Tokyo and is based inTokyo and Berlin. He graduated from the International
Centre of Photography in America (2007) and has received the Japanese Government Fellowship for overseas
study (2011). His work investigates the urban environment and systems of control. Kojima has published threephotobooks, New York (2015), Coming Back (2016) andTokyo (2017).

Yusuke Yamatani was born in Niigata Prefecture andis now based in Tokyo. After graduating from the Department of Philosophy of Rissho University, he went on
to work at Gaien Photography Studio. As a self-taught
photographer he met Shomei Tomatsu and gained technical and conceptual knowledge while working on his
own projects. He self-published Tsugi no yoru e (2013),
RAMA LAMA DING DONG (2015) and more recently
Into the Light with T&M Projects (2017). Yamatani’s work
is conceptually driven and he engages associated lens
technologies to visualise his ideas. He is represented by
Yuka Tsuruno Gallery, Tokyo.

Go Itami is a Tokyo-based photographer with an eye
for sparse and simple imagery that feel intensely private, as though we are only seeing them because we’ve
followed the artist home without his knowing. There isno common theme to his photography except that they
depict scenes from around Japan. Itami has publishedseveral experimental photobooks, including Study(2013), This Years Model (2015), and photocopy (2017).
More recently, Itami is interested in nuclear power
plants, politics, and his newborn baby, the latter of which
you can see on his diaristic Tumblr.
Yoshinori Mizutani was born in Fukui and is now
based in Tokyo. He graduated from the Tokyo Collegeof Photography after graduating from Nihon University
College of Economics. Mizutani has published several
photobooks with the publishing house IMA including
Tokyo Parrots (2014), Colors (2015), YUSURIKA (2015)
and HANON (2016). Like other celebrated Japanese photographers, his work often uses birds as a central motif
and metaphor.
Asako Narahashi is a Tokyo-based photographer who
graduated from the Faculty of Literature from Waseda
University, Tokyo. Her work focuses on the relationshipbetween water and land and her photographs resonate
a unique sense of tranquillity, distance and instability
most know through her publication Half Awake and Half
Asleep in the Water first published in 2002. Between 1996
- 2000, Narahashi and Miyako Ishiuchi self-published
Main Foto Magazine Vols. 1 – 10 in a limited editionof 500 copies that predominately featured work by thetwo photographers as well as interviews and images by
predominately female artists.

Shingo Kanazawa was born in Kyoto and is now basedin Tokyo. He graduated with an MA in Media Arts andis presenting undertaking a Ph.D. at the Tokyo University of Arts. He has published two books, And Animals(2009) and Father (2016). One day, Kanagawa’s father
suddenly disappeared, abandoning his normal, everyday
life. As if to have no regard for the concern he caused
his family, Mr. Kanagawa would return home, and thenrepeatedly disappear again. Living apart from his family,
he would end up quitting his job and eventually filed
for bankruptcy, losing his connection to society. The
book, Father, depicts the deep recesses of the humansoul, through the presence and absence of his father.
This work is constructed through photos captured of his
father, a diary by the author kept while shooting, and theover 1000 self-portrait photographs taken by his father.

Yuji Hamada was born in Osaka and is now based inTokyo. He began working at a publisher upon graduationfrom College of Art (Photography) The University ofJapan (2003). Hamada uses multiple lens methodologies
and his work questions the nature of vision of both thevisible and invisible. This exploration is represented in
his work and subsequent publication photograph which
was nominated for the Paris Photo/Aperture First Photobook Award (2014). More recently he published his
experimental printing project C/M/Y and BRANCH, acollection created in Switzerland.

Hiroyuki Takenouchi is a Tokyo-based photographer
who graduated from the College of Art (Photography) at
The University of Japan (2008). His work is an exploration of the nature – culture divide with subtle insights tohomosexuality in contemporary Japan. Takenouchi got
an honourable mention in the New Cosmos of Photography Award and have published two photobooks: Things
will get better over time (2017) and The Fourth Wall by
T&M Projects (2017).
Hiromi Kakimoto is a Osaka-based photographer who
graduated from the Japan institute of Photography andFilm in Osaka. She visually explores themes associatedwith memories and the border between the real andunreal influenced by the subconscious world as well assynchronicity, and mythology. She works with The Third
Gallery Aya, Osaka, and IBASHO Gallery, Antwerp.
Kakimoto was also a founding member of the magazine
Shaba-Shaba that largely featured female Japanese Photography.

Yoshikatsu Fujii was born in Hiroshima and graduat-

ed from Tokyo Zokei University of Arts with BA in Art
and Film. His work deals with historical events, memory
and trauma. Fujii’s project Red String was influenced byhis parents’ divorce, and the hand-made limited edition
photobook was nominated for several awards, including
the Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation Photobook Award.
In October 2015 he moved back to his hometown to engage in his long-term research project called Hiroshima
Graph. Seen through the eyes of a third generation atomic bomb victim in Hiroshima city, the series attempts toshed new light on the disappearing traces from the war.

Masako Tomiya was born in Aomori Prefecture andstarted photography at high school and then graduatedfrom Osaka University of Arts (1999) and also studied
under the influential Japanese photographer Issei Suda.
She then studied at the Tokyo College of Photography
and during this period established her own publishinglabel HAKKODA and released her first photobook Tsugaru (2013). Tomiya’s work questions what is of importance in this era of continuous change and subsequently
created the work KITO published by Chose Commune(2017) which documents family, birth and life.
Kosuke Okahara was born in Tokyo and is based

between in Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan. He started his career
as a photographer after studying education and has
relentlessly been pursuing stories based on the theme‘Ibasyo’ which translates psychologically to a physicaland emotional space in which one can exist. Okahara
was the recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Fellowship andafter a long period of book-making and experimental
declination published Ibasyo in 2018.

Keiko Nomura was born in Kobe and is based in Tokyo. She studied English at the Doshisha Women’s College although didn’t complete her degree. She then went
on to study photography at the Visual Arts Academy.
Her work Drop of Light to Rushing Water was publishedon occasion of the exhibition Contemporary JapanesePhotography vol. 13 at The Museum of Photography,
Tokyo, and is a sensual, thoughtful, melancholic project that features evocative landscapes, city scenes andcareful, intimate portraits. Nomura has published six
photobooks.

www.ccp.org.au
June 8 - July 15
2018
Dr. Kristian Häggblom is interested in curatorial projects that are inspired by transdisciplinary art practices
and new modes of documentary making. When Häggblom first moved to Japan in 1999 he co- founded/curated
RoomSpace gallery with Warren Fithie on the second
floor of a Izakaya in Omoide Yokocho (known as “PissAlley”) in Shinjuku, Tokyo. While studying in Tasmania
in 2003 he received an Exhibition Development Grant
from CAST, Tasmania, to curate the Japanese Australian
exhibition Paper Bridges which was part of Ten days on
the Island festival in 2005. Häggblom has curated several
large-scale cross-cultural exhibitions that have included
the work of French photographer Mathieu Bernard-Reymond, Melbourne-based sound artist Philip Samartzis
and Japanese artist group Chim Pom.
When Häggblom relocated back to Australia in 2008 heco-founded and was head curator of Wallflower Photomedia Gallery that was located in Mildura, Australia.
The gallery was established to highlight and create further readings of photography within a regional context.
WPG aimed to present the work of artists using lensbased mediums from all over Australia, locally and fromthe world and aimed to initiate curated projects and runworkshops, seminars and lectures. The gallery exhibited work from Japan, Finland, America, Canada, Italy,
Mexico, England, Poland and Germany, in addition to
showcasing work in obscure non-gallery locations suchas a motel and prison. The physical gallery was discontinued at the end of 2015 when Häggblom moved to
Melbourne and now functions as a facilitator of projects
that include exhibitions, events, screenings, lectures andworkshops. Häggblom is the Course Convener of the
Master of Arts Photography postgraduate degree at the
Photography Studies College, Melbourne, and continues
his own practice.

Sam Forsyth-Gray is a Melbourne-based photogra-

pher originally from western Australia who recently
completed the Bachelor of Photography at Photography
Studies College, Melbourne. His work is concerned withideas of family, memory, and the human condition.
Interested in the merging of fine art and documentary
visual languages - often using archival images alongside
his own images - his working processes are fluid andexperimental and expand beyond the image to construct
3-dimensionised work in book and installation modes.
With a special interest in the application of found images
within contemporary art practice, his work seeks tocreate new ways of both seeing and understanding theseobjects by dissecting and intersecting photographic
surfaces, through collage and juxtaposition, and throughhis own photographic responses. Forsyth-Gray was a
finalist in the Australian Photobook of the Year for his
self published photobook On the Sea Stands a Rock andexhibited this work as an installation at the Perth Centre
for Contemporary Photography in 2018.

Special Thanks:First and foremost, all the participating artists who have worked with me along this complex and exhilarating journey. Big thanks to those that donated photobooks and prints to raise funds, and super thanks
to Chikako Enomoto, Hajime Kimura, Daisuke Morishita, Kenji Chiga and Kazuma Obara for being inAustralia for the install, launch and Public Engagement Program. Last but not least, the crew at CCP
for putting up with us! This project would not be possible without the ongoing support of Ross Lake &Helen Vivian.

Curatorial Assistant

Sam Forsyth-Gray (with support from James Bugg & Maia Meadows-Wood)

AdvisorsDaniel Boetker-Smith
Ken Nishikawa
Geoffrey Brown
Sayaka Takahashi
Miho Odaka
Mifumi Obata
Rohan Hutchinson
Pippa Milne

Technical Support

Peter Hatzipavlis
Shane Häggblom
Greg Wood (Woodworks)
Fuad Civecnamso (Tall Man)
Anne Davies (editing)
Stephen Palmer (The Projector Saviour)

Website Content (to present)

Sam Forsyth-Gray (Web Producer)
James Bugg
Pippa Milne
Melissa MilesCharlotte Vignau
Jessie Boylan
Paul Batt
Thorsteinn Cameron
Jesse Freeman
Isabella Capezio
Rohan Hutchinson
Philosophical Consultation
Tsuyoshi Ito (A/fixed Journal)
Cover images: Hiroshi Hatate Tama-chan, 2018

Artist Gallery Representation & Support
Risaku Suzuki

Mayumi Hosokura

Chikako Enomoto

Daisuke Morishita

Yusuke Yamatani

Main Sponsor: The Japan Foundation, Sydney

Education Sponsor: Photography Studies College, Melbourne

Production Sponsors