The Rural Return in Contemporary Japanese Photography

In key moments throughout the 20th century, photographers in Japan have traveled to the country’s most remote rural regions to seek new subjects. From Hamaya Hiroshi at the cusp of the Pacific War, to postwar photographers Hosoe Eikoh, Naitō Masatoshi, and Moriyama Daidō, these photographers traveled to the peripheries of Japan, and particularly the northeastern regions, seeking subjects for ethnographic documentation, or for inspiration from a landscape and folkloric culture steeped in an infamously spiritual “premodernity.” This talk will consider this history, and place it in dialogue with a new generation of contemporary photographers who are turning again to rural Japan, especially after the events of 3.11 and the Fukushima nuclear disaster.