shashasha

Sakae Ishida’s "Work is Life" (hataraku koto wa ikiru koto) chronicles the circumstances and daily toils of the working people of Japan’s rural Kochi Prefecture roughly half a century ago. Faced with the sights, clothes, scenes that - in a present that has undergone heavy modernisation - cannot be experienced anymore, one can only be in wonder at how much has changed in a mere 50 years.

"After the war, Sakae Ishida receives a camera from a traveller — his first encounter with photography.
From within the daily life of manual labor,
on his off days, the camera in one hand,
he goes to meet those whose work does not stop on Sunday."

— from the book’s preface