Shuji Akagi ¹ has recently published a book with Osiris ² that collects some of his photographs taken in Fukushima Prefecture after March 11, 2011. This is a strange book, and I’d recommend it fairly highly. (I am proud to say that I translated the book’s captions.) It can be purchased online through shashasha ³.

© Keiko Sasaoka

Kristian Häggblom has posted an interview with Keiko Sasaoka ¹ on his blog. Sasaoka, a member of photographers’ gallery, has been photographing Tohoku since the 3/11 disaster.

I have not written as much about Keizo Kitajima as I would have liked; his work interests me quite a lot, in no small part because of the progression of his career, from black-and-white Moriyama snapshot disciple to crisp, large format color urban landscape photographer. He has produced a number of noteworthy photobooks, but I would like to give a special mention to his project USSR 1991 ¹, which was realized as a photobook by Little Big Man.

Kitajima has just started a project called Untitled Records, which will consist of 25 exhibitions (to be held four times a year) at photographers’ gallery ² in Shinjuku. A small, reasonably-priced booklet will accompany each exhibit. The first exhibit, which consisted of three images taken in Tohoku after the earthquake, just closed last week. The good news for people outside of Japan—and indeed, the reason that I’m writing about the show here—is that Kitajima has created a website ³ to track the progress of the project.

I look forward to tracking it myself as a “person outside of Japan,” because I am returning to America in just a matter of months; this September, I will start a PhD program in Art History at UCLA. “Street Level Westwood”? I don’t think so.

"Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, 8/7/2013" © Keiko Sasaoka

I have not mentioned Keiko Sasaoka ¹ on this blog before, but I just saw her recent exhibit at photographers’ gallery, “Difference 3.11,” and I think that this could become an essential work of post 3/11 photography.

This photo was my favorite.

I have written before about Naoya Hatakeyama’s photographs taken in the aftermath of 3/11 ¹. He published some of these photographs as Kesengawa with Kawade Shobo, but I just saw the European version of this book, published by Light Motiv ², and it is much better. The design of the book and the layout of Hatakeyama’s text suits his images very well. I’m not sure yet how to track this book down, but it’s not to be missed.

© Kazutomo Tashiro

Kazutomo Tashiro ¹ will release his first photobook, “When Hamayuris Are in Bloom,” on November 8. This work is a long-term project of portraits taken in Fukushima and Tohoku after the March 11 disasters. The book is 488 pages long, includes 453 photographs, costs ¥3,990 and is the first book published by Satoyama-sha ². Amazon.co.jp ³ will carry it, and you might also be able to purchase it from photographers gallery ⁴, where Tashiro is a member.

Installments of “When Hamayuris Are in Bloom” have been exhibited a number of times at photographers gallery, and the work has attracted some attention; scholar Yoshiaki Kai wrote about it for the third issue of Art Critique ⁵.

If you are in Tokyo, a number of Tashiro’s photographs will be on display at Tokyodo bookstore ⁶ in Jimbocho until November 30.

Information.

© Kazutomo Tashiro

© Kazutomo Tashiro

© Kazutomo Tashiro

© Chung Chu-Ha

Korean photographer Chu-Ha Chung has a show of his work “Does Spring Comes to Stolen Fields?” at Session House  in Kagurazaka, through May 16. The website ¹ is kind of a mess, so here’s a link to a map ² of the gallery.

Last year I wrote a long article for American Photo ³ explaining the background of this work, which draws its title from a Korean poem written under Japanese occupation. I don’t want to bill this exhibit as a Shiga-esque ⁴ tour de force, but I would recommend seeing it if you can.

It’s two years on from March 11, 2011. No one in Tokyo has literally forgotten about the triple disaster, but it’s easy to feel as if it never happened. There are still only three photo projects about the disaster that I think are worth viewing: Rolls Tohoku ¹, Naoya Hateyakama’s “Natural Stories” and Lieko Shiga’s “Rasen Kaigan.”

People around Tokyo may be interested to see Toshiya Watanabe’s exhibit “18 Months,” at Poetic Scape in Naka-Meguro ².

© Chu-Ha Chung

I have neglected to post links to some of the things that I’ve written for American Photo over the past couple of months, and while I’m planning to do a larger link dump, I want to highlight one post in particular since it relates directly to Japan. It’s a long piece on the work of a Korean photographer, Chu-Ha Chung ¹, who traveled to Fukushima in the wake of the 3/11 nuclear accident to take photos there. If you keep an eye on Asian news you’ll be aware that tensions between Japan and Korea are running extremely high, and the name of Chung’s project, “Does Spring Come To Stolen Fields?”, references the title of a famous Korean poem written under Japanese occupation. However, Chung is very sincere about creating understanding through his work, and I think his project deserves a careful look.

Everywhere around us, a landscape of ravage merged with ocean and sky to present shockingly photogenic scenes. Every modern and postmodern aesthetic, together with memories of the greatest literature, art and cinema, could be found or invoked in what we saw, in the quality of air and light, in the sounds and the silence, and in the emotions we felt or tried to imagine. A photographer could come here, and at the end of a single day’s shooting have enough pictures for the most spectacular photobook – like Robert Polidori or Mitch Epstein’s photographs of New Orleans after Katrina. Yet, what Lieko showed us and talked about demanded another order of engagement. It asked for a constant readjustment and refinement of judgment, in which the power of feeling and recall becomes inseparable from the ethical, the practical and the aesthetic.

Aveek Sen, “The Resistant Photograph: A Day with Lieko Shiga” ¹

This paragraph alone contains more insight about photography after 3/11 than any other entire piece of writing I’ve seen. The rest of the article is also excellent, showing why Shiga’s upcoming Sendai show ² could be an important one.

Aveek Sen’s posts for the Fotomuseum blog ³ are also worth a look.