shashasha

“From across the sea, for the first time in my life I saw the island where I grew up.”

The photobook “Across the Sea” is Japanese photographer Motonari Tagawa’s journey through the sea of Nagasaki, his old home.
A medium-format camera always with him, Tagawa traveled to many coasts and islands– some inhabited, others not – and through his landscape and portrait photographs captured the people, the beliefs and the history of his old home. Arranged in the style of an American road trip, Tagawa takes us with him on a journey into the past, mingling his own memories and experiences with the history of the area.

“Those islands are relatively close to the Chinese mainland, and since ancient times various peoples, cultures, and religions have arrived from across the sea. Buddhism came from China, but there are also Shinto shrines dotted here and there. During the Age of Discovery, the Portuguese and Spanish brought Christianity. And then came the Hidden Christians, who weathered oppression generation after generation. Even now those same faiths are still blended here, still co-exist around this ocean. The people, regardless of their beliefs, all practiced fishing or whaling in this same sea and cultivated those same steep terrain.” — from Motonari Tagawa’s foreword

The book also includes a long essay by Tagawa as well as detailed information on each photograph (all text included in Japanese & English translation).