Ishiuchi Miyako

Literature

"In 1977, I photographed the town where I formerly lived, and held my first exhibition. At the time I knew nothing about photography, not to mention ever dreaming of becoming a photographer one day, but there was only a fervor that I could not place, as well as a certain acuteness that had grown on me, so I walked these streets once more, as if to reconfirm the hurt that I could not help but recollect with such sharpness, and I shot pictures, and printed them. The photographs, with memories smeared starkly into each and every grain in the texture, were combined with the characteristic strength of ignorance. Capturing Yokosuka in photographs. It was, unmistakably, a journey to past recollections of youth. Memory, history, documentation, time, vestiges all the elements of the photograph were ready and waiting here in this town. Yokosuka is a town that very much suits the photograph.

(...) "YOKOSUKA AGAIN 1980 1990" is comprised of photos taken during the period since that "FROM YOKOSUKA" exhibit, through the closing of the EM Club and its subsequent decay, until finally the abandoned ruin was torn down in 1990. I also had a chance to shoot pictures of the interior of the EM Club before its demolition, and hope to put them together with a different approach on another occasion sometime in the future. Yokosuka once more.... See you again."

- Excerpt from Yokosuka Again by Ishiuchi Miyako, 1998.