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In 1989, the world was at a turning point.

The Cold War ended, the Gulf War broke out, the Tiananmen Square Massacre occurred, and in Japan, the era of the Emperor Showa came to an end. It was a year during which the demise of the post-war world order became obvious. Then, in 1991, the “bubble” of the Japanese economy burst. While standing right at that pivotal point in history and witnessing all those things happening around me, I launched two separate projects: “Industrial Archaeology” in 1991, and in 1993, the “Fake Scape” series.

“Industrial Archaeology” focuses on production sites of key industries during the period of rapid economic growth, while “Fake Scape,” following two years later, is a portrait of stores with flashy, eccentric designs that were set up along national highways (mainly Route 16) in the suburbs of major cities. I eventually continued to photograph these
places until around 2005.

In 2021, I was given an opportunity to present my works in a solo show that I titled “Ouroborous,” juxtaposing both projects in a combined image space at Canon Gallery S (Shinagawa, Tokyo). So there I was, thirty years after commencing work on these series,
and I felt that I was finally able to express the thoughts that had been elaborating since the 1990s about the uncertain situation of Japan at the turn of the century, while also thinking that these images are still valid today as documents that reflect the general state of the nation.

Today, in the year 2024, the advance of digital infrastructures is accelerating, the cycle of production and consumption transforms in ways beyond intelligibility by conventional concepts, and it seems as though it still drifts along with the continuously fluid situation. I believe that it is a meaningful practice to examine the status quo by looking back on those days of the 1990s.

– After words by Hiromi Tsuchida

Hiromi Tsuchida 土田ヒロミ

Born 1939 in Fukui. Graduated from the University of Fukui’s School of Engineering. Started working as a freelance photographer after quitting his day job at the head office of Pola Inc. Taught at the Tokyo College of Photography in 1971-96, and was a professor at Osaka University of Arts in 2000-13. Next to continuously taking photographs at bomb sites in Hiroshima for five decades since around 1975, he has been capturing the changing faces of Japan over the years of rapid economic growth and the “economic bubble,” in photographs themed around local cultures such as festivals and other folk customs.

Well-known works include “Autistic Space” (1971, Taiyo Award), “Hiroshima 1945-1978” (1978, Ina Nobuo Award), “Hiroshima” (1984, Photographic Society of Japan Award) and “Tsuchida Hiromi’s Nippon: Chronicling Japan” (2008, Domon Ken Award). Photobooks include Zokushin (’76), Counting Grains of Sand (’90), Berlin (’11), Fukushima (’18) and Aging (’22). In addition to the ongoing long-term documentary project “Fukushima” (2011-), he has been visiting Berlin and Jerusalem since 1999 and 2005 respectively, in order to be able to discuss the matter of Hiroshima from a relativistic standpoint. Aging, for which he has been taking one selfportrait every day since 1986, is a series themed around “time and memento mori” that developed out of an idea to try and epress aspects of continuation, repetition, and the inability of the eye to perceive gradual transformation.

Tsuchida’s works are included in the collections of the MoMA in New York, the Centre
Pompidou, the National Gallery of Canada, Tate Modern, the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (TOP), the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, and other museums around the world.