Yoshikiyo Takigawa - Restoration of Humanity - 1972

Restoration of Humanity

Yoshikiyo Takigawa
Self-Published/1972/Japanese/278*218*15

Born in Nara Prefecture in 1944, Takigawa graduated from Kinki University and studied photography at a technical college under the tutelage of photographer Takayuki Ogawa. The most prominent of these is a work titled “Seventeen Year Visit: Children of Morinaga Arsenic Milk Poisoning,” in which he captured on camera people still suffering since the tragic poisoning incident in 1955. He is also famous for “The Elegant Life of a Free Man,” which follows an elderly vagrant, and has left behind many wonderful portraits that focus on people who have generally been turned away from and captured with a warm eye and deep affection. This book, published in a private edition in 1972, the same year as Morinaga's, is a collection of his works, consisting of illustrations recorded at five facilities for the handicapped and welfare people in Nara Prefecture, where he was born and raised. This is a human documentary by a photographer who was moved by the images of people who live freely, honestly, and with all their might, despite their handicaps.