Koji Onaka - My Ektachrome

Koji Onaka
My Ektachrome (Signed)

Published by Kaido Book, 2022
Size: 15.5 x 21.3 cm
64 Pages
Hardcover
Edition of 500 copies.

Koji Onaka's "My Ektachrome" came about when the photographer rediscovered a number of his photographs taken throughout Japan between 1996 and 1999. During this rare period, Onaka used positive slide film (Kodak Ektachrome) before adopting color negative film for his work. True to Onaka's style, these photographs—of small-town street corners, mom-and-pop shops, out-of-focus animals, alleys filled with children playing, old shopping malls, and sun-drenched hills and mountains—exude an eerie, inescapable sense of nostalgia. But as in the earlier works, it is a warm and productive nostalgia that prompts the viewer to imagine ghost stories for all these personal moments, encounters, and borrowed places.

"In 1996, in my mid-thirties, after publishing DISTANCE, a book of high-contrast B&W photographs, I used B&W negative and color positive films for a while. After a while, I encountered color negative films and, naturally, said goodbye to B&W and positive films. Recently, I found a lot of positive films from that era that I had forgotten about and cut out the frames that seemed good and set them aside for my first check. Now that I couldn't find those shots I had previously checked as the most important, I thought it might be fate. So, to move forward, I copied the remaining photos with a digital camera."
- excerpt from Koji Onaka