Exit Town, Vol. 5

This is the fifth volume in Atsushi Yoshie's photo booklet series "Deguchi no Machi" (Town of Exits). The series quietly observes landscapes that are often overlooked as "nothing special," taken while walking through familiar areas, primarily in Ota City, Gunma Prefecture.

Yoshie describes photography as "encountering something outside oneself." By repeatedly walking the same land, responding to what he encounters each time, and taking numerous photographs, he gradually shapes his relationship with a particular place. This series features landscapes around Ota City, Gunma Prefecture, where the artist was born, raised, and still lives, places that are inseparable from his own life.

There are no grand natural sights or famous scenic spots here. Instead, there are man-made objects pushed out from main roads, old houses, overgrown fields, empty lots, and traces of life washed ashore along the Tone River. A quiet boundary unfolds where artificial and natural, center and periphery, new and old, intermingle. Yoshie regards these landscapes, with their "ambiguous sense of distance," as his own nature, scenes that make him feel life intensely.

This series is one of the six volumes of the photo booklet "Deguchi no Machi" published between 2018 and 2021, and also a collection of works that led to the photobook of the same name published in 2024. It is a series that captures the very relationship with the land, born from continuously engaging with the same place. Through landscapes found in everyday life, it is a book that quietly makes one contemplate the distance between city and nature, and between people and the land.

[Title] Deguchi no Machi vol.5
[Publisher] Yoshie Atsushi Photography Office (Salvage Press)
[Publication Date] February 11, 2021
[Page Count] 48 pages (23 plates)
[Size] Approx. 168*243*4mm / 180g
[Format] Softcover
[Language] Japanese
[Title Reading] DEGUTI NO MACHI 5
[Author/Editor, etc.] Yoshie Atsushi / Author, Shichiro (Trout) / Book Design
[Printing] Kashiwamura Printing / Printing
[ISBN] -
[Condition] Used [7] Very Good (minor damage to spine corners)
[Accessories] None
[Featured In] None
[Related Exhibitions] Atsushi Yoshie Photo Exhibition "Deguchi no Machi" (Nikon Salon, 2023), Atsushi Yoshie Photo Exhibition "Deguchi no Machi" (OGU MAG+, 2024)

Yoshie Atsushi (Born 1973)

Born in Ota City, Gunma Prefecture. Photographer.

Graduated from Chuo University, Faculty of Letters, Department of French Literature in 1997. After working as a photography assistant and then at a ranch in Hokkaido, he began his career as a freelance photographer. He continues to photograph landscapes across Japan, focusing on the duality of artificial and natural, old and new, center and periphery.

Published "Chiho Toshi" (Local City) in 2014 and "Kawa Sekai" (River World) in 2016. Since 2018, he has continuously produced the photo booklet series "Deguchi no Machi," and in 2024, published a photobook of the same name through Fugensha. Awarded the 25th Miki Jun Award in 2023.

Major works include "Chiho Toshi," "Kawa Sekai," and "Deguchi no Machi."

Major awards include the 25th Miki Jun Award (2023).

Major collections -

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