GARY McLEOD & OTHERS

What does a recovering landscape look like? In 2019, I took this suggestion as a literal invitation to rephotograph in towns and cities in Iwate Prefecture. Rephotography has many names (including fixed-point observation or repeat photography) and its initial significance in this region might be documenting reconstruction following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. But how long does recovery take? And how to know recovery is complete?  Rephotographing with no timeframe opens up conversation with an earlier past and a further away future. Subsequently, rephotographing begins to reflect the quieter changes of normality.

This body of work uses a range of photomedia and rephotographic strategies to show quiet change, but it also points to how change can be represented. It began as a two-year investigation of time and photomedia in Tohoku funded by KAKEN grant 19K22994. Those two years led to further visits and a self-promise to keep sharing the work in Tohoku. Kamaishi city represents the largest collection of images (and displays) but efforts are being made to visit other towns and cities wherever possible. Tohoku in contemporary photography is so often presented as projects or stories and this body of work attempts to resist such labels. Not because of any insider/outsider dynamic, but because the places have come to matter to me. Photographers go to Tohoku to learn – and Tohoku is happy to teach – but what does it get in return?