Remembrance: Sanriku, Fukushima, 2011-2014

Remembrance: Sanriku, Fukushima, 2011-2014
Keiko Sasaoka

w 329 x h 257mm / 142 pages / 124 color photographs
Essay: Shino Kuraishi
Design: Kei Naruse
Published by Shashinkoenrin
Printing and Binding: iWORD Co., Ltd

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Remembrance: Sanriku, Fukushima, 2011-2014 is a photo book in both English and Japanese that chronicles a project by photographer Keiko Sasaoka, who made repeated trips to Japan’s Tohoku region after the 2011 earthquake disaster. 124 color photographs taken during the first four years after the disaster were carefully selected that bring into focus the transition of time following on the moment when all sense of balance tragically capsized. The original visage of towns and villages has vanished, along with those of people forced to undergo suffering beyond imagining—the absence captured by her lens opens our beings to hope. Her camera interrogates of these landscapes the very meaning of “the place we live.”

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“The actual sight of the disaster area was different from the impression I had formed in seeing it over and over again in the media. Images of possible photographs ran through my mind. In all my time taking photographs, never once had I captured something like what I saw there, nor would I ever have wanted to.”— Keiko Sasaoka

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“Sasaoka has determined that what should be disclosed through photography is precisely the totality of landscape, a totality that lives through an endless expansion of images never represented by or reducible to a single photograph, much less an individual person or isolated object.”— Shino Kuraishi (Poet, Critic)

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海と陸と。東東北のあの時以後から問われる現在。

2011年以後、東北地域を幾度も訪ね、撮影を続けた笹岡啓子の連作「Remembrance」。10年を経たいま提示するあの時からの4年間。出来事の「後の世界」に注視し、「後の想い」を呼び覚ますこと。静寂な光を湛えた写真が問いかける——〈私たちの生きる場所〉は、どこにあるのか。

《この現実の光景は、メディアで繰り返し目にした被災地の印象とも違っていた。撮影のイメージが浮かんでは消えていく。いままで写真を撮ってきて、見たように写ったことは一度もない。そしてそのことを望んでいなかった。》——笹岡啓子

《決して「一枚の写真」や、写真に写る「一人」や「一個の事物」に代表されたり要約されることのない、イメージの絶えざる拡張を生きる風景の全体、それこそが写真によって開示されるべきものと笹岡は心に決めている。》——倉石信乃（詩人・批評家） 本書解題より

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