shashasha

On the occasion of the school's 150th anniversary, Japanese photographer Taichi Onoue visited Okayama Asahi Senior High School, his former high school, and spent a year documenting its buildings, students, and facilities through the seasons.

While Onoue's black-and-white photographs initially appear objective and methodical, an undeniable sense of nostalgia and attachment soon emerges. Onoue, an established psychiatrist in addition to his career as a photographer, graduated from the school in 1979. Although none of his classmates or teachers were still at the school in the year he took these photographs, his own childhood memories not only appear in the photographs, but likely guided his choice of subjects - certain trees and inconspicuous corners of the school grounds that hold a special place in his heart. Despite (or perhaps because of) the personal nature of the series, "Okayama Prefectural Okayama Asahi Senior High School" transcends Onoue's individual experience and captures the complex feeling of visiting places from one's past again after many years.