Akihiko Okamura
The Memories of Others
Published by Atelier EXB, 2024
First Edition
Size: 20 x 28.5 cm
160 pages
Hardcover
Language: French
This book brings together for the first time the work in Ireland of Akihiko Okamura on the occasion of the digitization of this almost unpublished corpus, accompanied by texts which contextualize his work in the history of the period and that of the photographic medium.
During the Troubles, the struggle for independence that lasted from 1969 to 1998, Northern Ireland attracted a large number of foreign photojournalists who came to document the events. Some of them found a subject that touched them personally, pushing them to go beyond the codes of photojournalism. This is the case of the Japanese photographer Akihiko Okamura who produced unique and remarkable work in color in the early years of the conflict, and who is curiously still little known today.
Born in Tokyo in 1929, Akihiko Okamura distinguished himself as one of the great war photographers of his generation, working in Vietnam in the early 1960s. He is still highly respected in Japan, but his work and experiences in Ireland, which were central to both his work and his personal life, have been little explored. Okamura arrived on the island with his family in 1969 and lived there until his death in 1985. He photographed the island and its surroundings, but soon became interested in the north of the country and its struggle for independence.
His attachment to this country and its history led him to produce one of the most significant photographic works produced by a foreign photographer, combining both this simplicity of framing and subject, very Japanese, with a strength in composition for more violent subjects. In Ireland, he moved away from photojournalism to develop a more personal testimony. The choice to work in color, while the reports of the time are mostly in B&W, and to favor soft tones, as if out of time, contrast with the violence of the time. His images seem to detach themselves from reality. He perceived the permanence of everyday life in the impermanence of war.