Kitakami River
Kitakami River
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This photo book, "Kitakamigawa," is by Shoko Hashimoto, a leading Japanese photographer.
Known for his work "Goze," Hashimoto has spent half a century continuously photographing the Kitakami River basin in his hometown of Miyagi. This collection is a culmination of his work, featuring everything from his early photographs taken with a Ricohflex, his first camera in high school, to pieces from the 2000s.
What this book portrays is not merely local scenery. Fishermen, horse fairs, festivals, boats at the river mouth, salmon, his grandfather smoking a cigarette, a barber dancing the loach scooping dance, an old woman drying nori seaweed, vendors traversing the riverside—Kitakamigawa, a mighty river, is at the center of a chaotic flow of people's lives, their scents, the humidity, and memories themselves.
When Ihei Kimura saw Hashimoto's "Goze," he described his photographs as "smelly pictures."
This sensation is strongly evident in this work as well, with sweat, salt, smoke, fish, earth, fertilizer, wind—the sense of "smell" rising from the images is the greatest characteristic of Hashimoto's photography.
From the 1990s to the 2000s, Hashimoto pulled a cart laden with photographic panels up the Kitakami River, holding outdoor photo exhibitions called "Medaka-ten" (Killifish Exhibition) in various locations. As if tracing the primal landscape he saw from his father's and aunt's carts in his childhood, Hashimoto continued to photograph his hometown.
While documentary, there is a mysterious flow of time where reality and fantasy, memory and land, the dead and the living intertwine. This book holds an extremely unique position within the lineage of "personal photography" and autochthonous documentaries in Japanese photography.
[Title] Kitakamigawa
[Publisher] Shunpuusha
[Publication Date] November 9, 2005 (First Edition)
[Number of Pages] 208 pages
[Size] Approximately 182 x 244mm / 648g
[Format] Softcover
[Language] Japanese
[Title Reading] KITAKAMIGAWA
[Author/Editor, etc.] Hashimoto Shoko / Author
[Printing] Shinano / Printing and Binding
[ISBN] 4861100550
[Condition] Used【6】Good to Average (Slight stains and minor scratches on the top edge)
[Accessories] None (No obi)
[Featured in] -
[Related Exhibition] Shoko Hashimoto Photo Exhibition "Kitakamigawa" (Zen Photo Gallery, March 27 — May 30, 2026)
Shoko HASHIMOTO (橋本照嵩) 1939-
Born in Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture in 1939. Photographer.
Graduated from Nihon University College of Art, Department of Photography in 1963. In 1974, he received the Photographic Society of Japan Newcomer's Award for his photo book "Goze." In the same year, he participated in "Fifteen Photographers" (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) alongside Nobuyoshi Araki, Kazuo Kitai, Takuma Nakahira, Masahisa Fukase, and Daido Moriyama, exhibiting "Goze." His work was acquired by The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
He photographs various regions of Japan with his unique perspective, focusing on autochthonous landscapes, people's lives, itinerant performers, hot spring towns, and river basins. He is highly regarded for his photographic expression that conveys even humidity and scents, emerging from his deep relationships with his subjects.
His representative works include "Goze," "Kitakamigawa," "Nishiyama Onsen," "Ishinomaki," and "San'ya." Since 2011, he has continuously photographed Ishinomaki after the Great East Japan Earthquake. In recent years, his work has been re-evaluated both domestically and internationally, primarily through Zen Photo Gallery.
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