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“La Ville de la Chance,” Hiroshi Oshima’s twenty-year photographic record of several towns in Japan’s Iwate Prefecture.
The vintage photobook (published December 1987) includes three of Oshima’s most well-known series: “Koun no Machi (City of Happiness)”, “Sanhei,” and “Haru to Shura (Spring and Asura)” to draw its encompassing portrait of life and culture in small towns in Northern Japan. Oshima’s black-and-white photographs—already remarkable at the time of their publication—have in the years since gained a role as a historical document.
Each of the three series is preceded by a short introduction by Oshima, who also wrote a long concluding essay about the three series (in Japanese).