HUMAN LAND (SIGNED)

Ikko Narahara
HUMAN LAND (SIGNED)

Photographs: Ikko Narahara

Text: Ikko Narahara & Tatsuo Fukushima

Publisher: Libroport

176 pages

Pictures: 107

Year: 1987

Comments: Hardcover under dust jacket and obi. 29 x 24 cm. First edition, text in Japanese and English. some creases to obi otherwise in very good condition. Signed by Ikko Narahara

During the 1960s, the small island of Gunkanjima - now a world heritage site and uninhabitated for more than 40 years - off the coast of Nagasaki was home to a population of roughly 5000. They were coal workers during an era that relied on coal as its energy source. Due to the small size of the island, the population density was more than nine times higher than Tokyo’s.

For his 1956 exhibition “Human Land”, Narahara photographed Gunkanjima as well as the island of Sakurajima in Kagoshima prefecture, which has suffered a gigantic volcanic explosion - the most powerful in 20th century Japan - in 1914 that left villages covered under a three meter thick layer of ashes.