shashasha

With the photobook “At The Tidal Flats,” Kinkan Gallery publishes a mesmerizing series of photographs by Japanese photographer Kiyoshi Niiyama (1911–1969).

One day in late March in the 1950s, Niiyama walked along Imazu Beach near his home of Ehime during high tide and encountered an unusual scenery: the sea, having receded far into the distance, had created beautiful patterns in the sand and, crucially, uncovered a number of objects—worn down wooden piles—that now dotted the beach with strange shapes that bring to mind birds, dogs, seals or squids. As Niiyama photographed the scene, the tide had already started to rush in again, submerging the piles and erasing the patterns in the sand. Despite coming back to the beach in search of the same scenes, Niiyama never found them as beautiful again as on that day. He only had time to shoot around twenty photographs in total, fifteen of which are now available again, brilliantly printed, in “At The Tidal Flats.”

The book finishes with an afterword by photographer Yu Shinoda (all texts included in Japanese and in English translation).