A Port Town Elegy (Signed)

Mao Ishikawa,A Port Town Elegy (Signed)

Mao Ishikawa
A Port Town Elegy (Signed)

Photographs: Mao Ishikawa

Text: Mao Ishikawa

Publisher: Zen Foto Gallery

96 pages

Year: 2015

Comments: Softcover, 257 x 178 mm. Reprinted new edition, 2015. Black & white photographs. Limited edition of 700 copies. Fine copy. Signed by Mao Ishikawa.

sold

A Port Town Elegy. It was in 1983 when I got divorced at the age of 30. Since I was not confident that I could live as photographer with a daughter, I decided to run a bar to make some steady money. I opened a bar in the middle of a residential area near Aja-Shinko port in Naha, where cargo ships come and go.

Most of the guests were men, including port workers and fishermen. They talked in the Okinawan language, drank a lot, fought each other; my bar was always lively.

I fell in love with one of the guests who worked at the port, and we started living together in an apartment near the bar. Near there, I found a little old house where a man was living alone after his wife and kids had left. Some men always gathered in the house, drinking all day, sometimes fighting to -– making a man’s world.

Nobody approached this house where scary-looking guys got together, but my boyfriend visited there every day. I also went with him, out of curiosity, to the house and started to shoot pictures of those men. Even when they started to fight and beat each other up, I just kept shooting silently.

-Mao ISHIKAWA


Mao Ishikawa,A Port Town Elegy (Signed)

Mao Ishikawa,A Port Town Elegy (Signed)

Mao Ishikawa,A Port Town Elegy (Signed)

Mao Ishikawa,A Port Town Elegy (Signed)

Mao Ishikawa,A Port Town Elegy (Signed)

Mao Ishikawa,A Port Town Elegy (Signed)

Mao Ishikawa,A Port Town Elegy (Signed)

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Mao Ishikawa,A Port Town Elegy (Signed)