Hiroshi Masaki
Saikimachi, Japan, 2009
Gelatin silver print
Image 34 x 41.2 cm/Paper 40.5 x 50.5 cm
13.39 x 16.22 inches
13.39 x 16.22 inches
Japan in black and white. Bookdealer and photographer Hiroshi Masaki returns to his home town of Uwajima, Japan, to study the place and, in his words, find “the idealized, provincial town that exists universally in the hearts of all Japanese people.”
In the foreword of Masaki’s 2012 monograph Uwajima: A Private Landscape, Daido Moriyama writes: “In this series of photographs of a small town, there is an almost strange lack of people present, the only humans to appear being a few children dotted faintly in the far corner of a school yard...Only the houses composed of unadorned light and shadow, and the bare, unpretentious streets are left in this coalescence of memories.”
The exhibition will feature a curated group of images from Uwajima: A Private Landscape. Uwajima’s empty streets and shuttered windows are an unexpected foil to American beach towns in the off season, deserted but not uninhabited. In the face of unfamiliar scenery, the viewer may seek out familiar sentimentalities.