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The Yoshida Dormitory is a self-governing dormitory that historically played a central role for students attending Kyoto University in Japan. Throughout the decades, it served as a place where the community gathered for the performance of plays and music, fostering the local youth culture. In recent years, a controversy between the dormitory students and the university sparked after the institution ordered them to leave the place due to the building’s age. In April 2019, the university filed a lawsuit against them, demanding they vacate the building. The dormitory students disagreed and asked for a withdrawal. The legal battle has continued since then, with a fifteenth oral argument planned at the Kyoto District Court for November 2022. The photo book includes photographs taken by Kanta Nomura in the Yoshida Dormitory from 2008 to 2019, as well as vernacular images he collected from the Kyoto University Archives and alumni albums across generations.

The Yoshida Dormitory Students’ History is the winner of the 2021 first edition of The Andy Rocchelli Grant, an international award promoted by CESURA in the name of its cofounder and photojournalist Andy Rocchelli, killed in a mortar attack in Andreevka, East Ukraine, in 2014. The book was selected as the best unpublished photographic dummy by a jury that included Arianna Arcara, David Campany, Tamara Corm, Alex Majoli, and Lucia Rocchelli and was produced and published by Cesura Publish in freedom of expression, as Andy would have wanted.

Curated by Yumi Goto