Signed; Atsushi FUJIWARA - Nangokusho - 2013

富士原敦は、祖父の足跡を南部の日本で辿り、Nangokushoと呼ばれる短歌の書に導かれている。

「Nangokusho」には、孤独の詩的な感触があり、失われたルーツを求める旅がある。敦の視線は詩的な句を視覚的な映像へと翻訳し、彼は見えないもの、遥か去ったものを追い求める。

空っぽの街路、鉄道、裏庭をゆっくりとさまよう旅であり、「Nangokusho」は日本南部の地へ捧げる静かな賛歌である。

“The photographs speak for themselves. In the critique of photography, I make it a general rule to comment on the background from which the photographs arose.

If these were paintings, the past might be portrays from memory or imagination, but as regard this collection, photography will capture only what is currently there.

Today, Kagoshima and beautiful Okinawa are dramatically different from how Tohmon (nd: art-name of Atsushi’s grandfather) saw them, and there is nothing remaining of that now.

Fujiwara Atsushi undertook to pursue sceneries that no longer exist. If the reader should sense a certain emptiness from these photographs, this must be understood to be the emptiness of post-war Japan.”

Extract from Akira Hasegawa’s afterword.

SIGNED