MOTHER

book

title
MOTHER
publisher
AKAAKA Art Publishing Inc.
designer
NAKAJIMA Yuta
ISBN
978-4865410976
size
128 pages,
20.0cm x 30.0cm x 1.0cm
price
4,000 JPY +tax
dealers
AKAAKA Art Publishing Inc.
Amazon Japan
contact form on this website for special edition
(including a signed copy or a steel box)
note
This book case looks like steel board. You can pull the book out of it and the cover appears designed with a photo of the engineers in a steel-making factory. That shows it is difficult to imagine their struggles for making beautiful products.

exhibitions

@ Canon Gallery Ginza (JPN) in 2019

printed on steel plate by EAST WEST

framing direction by POETIC SCAPE

Visualising the gaps

The photographs are arranged to tell the stories of the several gaps in Japanese industry. #1 is between dynamic process and static products, #2 is between elder engineers and younger engineers, and #3 is between the circumstanses of 1960s and today.

The Strata of Time

To these landscapes captured in two-dimensional photographs one more dimension is added when they are layered one atop the other. They seem separated, but they are connected. Similarly the history that people compose is continuous, yet the individual can only take part in isolated periods. One person is able to catch time on a line, and to cross another person at a point. It is never easy to take over something, but the possibility will rise as we are conscious of the background.

photographs

A blast furnace, which is the main facility in the steel-making factory, is compared to a mother's womb. All of the Japanese engineers say "Iron has its life". This sense is typically Japanese own idea. By their awe and modesty, they are sensitive even to slight changes of the iron's and the furnace's conditions to make their fine products.

We are not aware of their struggles against the delicate Mother behind the beautiful steel. This work also focuses on the high economic growth period in Japan through the succession of their skills and souls, in addition of the situation and the scenery at that period visually.

archival photo by Kaneyuki FUJIMOTO

archival photo by Takayoshi NAGAI

Nominations

2020
"London International Creative Competition"(UK) HM
2020
"Domon Ken Prize"(JP) finalist
2020
"Hayashi Tadahiko Prize"(JP) finalist
2019
"Critical Mass"(US) finalist
2019
"International Photography Awards"(US) HM
2019
"Le Prix de la Photographie de Paris"(FR) HM