JOIN USTravel to a remote part of the world – a picturesque island in Japan – with photography exhibition ‘Tohoku - Through the Eyes of Japanese Photographers.’
A host of lensmen from Japan have captured the natural beauty, people and traditions of island Tohoku in their camera. The exhibit is on at the Japan Foundation office, Lajpat Nagar till February 16.
Curator Kotaro Iizawa, an acclaimed photographer himself, says, “This show depicts Tohoku region in the period 1950s and 1960s alongside the new and latest Tohoku. Tohoku was one of the worst affected region in the historic Great Eastern Japan Earthquake which struck on March 11, 2011. However, this exhibition focuses on how the strong people of this place have bounced back.”
Although Tohoku has a rather cold climate, it is blessed with a beautiful and bountiful natural environment of seas, mountains, rivers, and forests. It is also known as a centre of the Jomon culture, which was developed by some of the first people living in Japan. The earthquake of 2011 left 20,000 people dead or missing and caused the unprecedented nuclear accident of Fukushima nuclear power plant.
This exhibition is composed of photographs of the Tohoku taken by nine individual photographers and one photographers’ group. Teisuke Chiba and Ichiro Kojima photographed Tohoku in the 1950s and 1960s. Hideo Haga, Masatoshi Naito, and Masaru Tatsuki have recorded festivals and folk religious rites throughout the region.
Hiroshi Oshima and NaoyaHatakeyama have combined their personal histories with the landscapes of their home regions. MeikiRin turned his camera toward the beautiful natural environment.
Nao Tsuda searched for the source of the Japanese spirit in relics and artifacts of the Jomon period. A group of photographers led by Toru Ito have created the Sendai Collection, a series of photographs of anonymous scenesin Sendai, Miyagi prefecture.