shashasha

Anders Petersen shot the images in his photobook “Okinawa” in the year 2000, during a three-week long residence for the project “European Eyes on Japan.” Petersen concentrated his shooting on the streets of Naha City, documenting the people, the cats, the dogs either candidly or in posed portraits. Always on his mind was the gruel history Okinawa suffered during the Second World War.

“When walking the streets of Naha it was clear. This shy and caring tenderness in the ordinary, most normal situations. And everywhere. Standing often in a small barroom in the middle of old Makishi Public Market and drinking cups of Awamori. Looking at the colorful life in front of me, exposed to the exposed ones. Immediately a beautiful 98-year old woman approached me with a smile. She asked me to take her picture.” ― from Anders Petersen’s afterword