shashasha

After a lapse of about 40 years, Kitajima Keizo’s photographs of Koza (now Okinawa City) were presented at a solo exhibition held in 2022 at Skate Club Orion, an indoor skatepark in Koza. This distinctive photobook “Club Orion” is a montage of past and present, featuring scenes from that exhibition, along with scenes from the 1979 exhibition “Photo Express: Tokyo” and photographs of Koza taken in 1975-79.

The sense of original sin attached to the photographic act that Kitajima experienced in Koza at that time continued to cast a dark shadow over his subsequent activities, and he did not set foot in Okinawa until 2002, when he participated in an exhibition there. Photographs of Koza in bygone days is projected on a screen hung on the wall in the dim light of the indoor training space, which was renovated from the former A sign bar Club Orion. Through the photographs of this book, engraved two time periods, the question echoes: Can photographs, once taken, return to a suitable places?