All Japan Students Photographers Association - Hirou-shima - 1972

Hirou-shima

All Japan Students Photographers Association
491/1972/Japanese/238*175*20

This book is a collection of photographs published by the All-Japan Student Photography Federation (AJSF) entitled HIROSHIMA●HIROU-SHIMA. This networking organisation was formed by volunteers belonging to university photography clubs in Japan, who recorded the actual situation of the student movement that was breaking out across the country at the time, and also visited various parts of the country to take photographs based on their own awareness of the issues, and to continue to question the meaning of photography. Influenced by the likes of Shomei Higashimatsu and Kikuji Kawada, and under the guidance of leading photography critic Tatsuo Fukushima, the Anonymous group was active behind the scenes from the mid-1960s onwards, a turning point in post-war Japanese photography, as represented by Provoke and others. Many of the works of Zen-Nichi were introduced at the ‘Japanese Photography in 1968’ exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, organised by photography historian Ryuichi Kaneko, and are now being re-evaluated. The work depicts the scorched land of the A-bombed city, which was said to be ‘where no grass or trees would grow for 70 years’, but which has been wonderfully restored thanks to the efforts of the local people, as well as the dissatisfaction with the state through the wastelands, etc., which have still not progressed sufficiently. This is a collection of unknown records by anonymous photographers, and a book that makes us keenly aware of the underlying power of Japanese photography.