Kusukazu Uraguchi - Shima No Ama

Kusukazu Uraguchi
Shima no Ama

Published by Atelier EXB in 2024
Size: 22 x 27cm
160 pages
Hardcover
Languages: English

For centuries, ama—Japanese female fishermen-divers—have fueled the Japanese imagination. These free divers collect abalone, shells, and seaweed, the sale of which provides them with financial independence within their households. Since the mid-1950s and for over thirty years, Kusukazu Uraguchi (1922-1988) photographed them in the Shima region, along Japan's Pacific coast. The result of extensive research among nearly 40,000 negatives—almost all previously unseen—this remarkable archive of landscapes, portraits, and underwater views recounts both the daily life and the special place of the ama community within Japanese society.

Uraguchi's images speak of cultural heritage as much as of modernity, as these communities underwent profound changes following the wave of urbanization that swept through Japan after the war. His photographic language—the visual force of his contrasting blacks and whites, his sense of de-framing, and gestures captured in their spontaneity—celebrates bodily freedom, solidarity, and the spirit of independence.

To illuminate the multiple facets of this work, the visual corpus is accompanied by a text by Sonia Voss that reveals the mysterious world of this community, as well as a text by Chihiro Minato that places this work in the history of photography. A glossary, inspired by the writings of Japanese ethnologist Kiyoko Segawa and dedicated to the world of fishing and these divers, reveals all the richness and technicality of their discipline.