EXHIBITION

29th January - 23th February 2026

The winds prays for sublime stillness , Not to find something, but to just keep staringToshiya Murakoshi

In March 2011, radioactive materials were dispersed across wide areas as a result of the nuclear power plant accident caused by the earthquake and tsunami.

This event confronted us with the undeniable fact that substances beyond the reach of our five senses do indeed exist. Detectable only through specialized instruments, and possibly present in our immediate surroundings, this invisible presence offered a new perspective—one that compels us to reconsider how much of the world we routinely overlook or fail to perceive in our daily lives.

For me, as a photographer, the act of “seeing” is one of the most essential elements of my practice. The landscapes of my hometown, Fukushima, which I had continued to observe long before the disaster—what has changed since that unprecedented event, and what has remained the same? To reflect on this, I had to fix my gaze on the scenery before me, without being misled by preconceived notions shaped by scientific data or media narratives, and listen closely to what the landscape itself was trying to convey. What do we choose to “see,” and what do we choose not to see? I continue to photograph within the tension between these questions. Even if no clear answers emerge, holding onto this uncertainty itself has become my motivation for making photographs.

In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, many people visited the affected regions, including Fukushima, and an overwhelming number of photographs and videos flooded the media. Each time I encountered these images, I sensed an intention to steer viewers’ emotions in specific directions, and felt a disquieting impression that “reality” was being absorbed into a single, simplified “story.”

As someone born and raised in Fukushima, who had long observed and photographed this land, the scenes I witnessed in evacuation zones and in areas restricted due to radioactive contamination forced me to confront a painful question: was it right to continue photographing as I always had? And if I were to continue, it became imperative to clarify my own intention and stance. This marked the beginning of a deeply unsettling realization that compelled me to reconsider, at a fundamental level, the meaning and responsibility of photographing this place at all.

For me, photography cannot be reduced to the notion of “self-expression.” It is a return to the irreducible fact of pure experience—“I am seeing this now”—something that no one can take away. A photograph is the crystallization, the imprint, of condensed perception woven from that fact together with my thoughts and memories.

It is the trace of a way of thinking that seeks to observe what is visible more deeply, to perceive the meaning of the world as it emerges in my consciousness. At the same time, it is the very record of an endless dialogue with myself.

The many problems Fukushima continues to bear even today extend far beyond the span of a single individual’s lifetime. I may not live long enough to witness their ultimate resolution.

Yet as someone born and raised here, who has chosen to persist in the art of photography, I believe that each image, imprinted with fragments of time and light, can become a wedge driven against forgetting.

To quietly continue posing questions to the future, and to each individual viewer, I will keep taking photographs.

Toshiya Murakoshi
Born in 1980 in Sukagawa City, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.

Through photography, Murakoshi explores the relationship between humanity’s latent collective memory, his own personal memories, and the memories embedded in the land itself.

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 and the subsequent accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, he has focused more intensively on traveling throughout Fukushima Prefecture, seeking to uncover change, contradiction, and differences in perception through the landscape.

He has published numerous photobooks and is also deeply conscious of the means and spaces through which his work is presented; in 2009, he established an independent gallery and publishing label.

Currently, he teaches at universities and vocational schools, actively engaging in the transmission of photographic practice and the development of emerging artists.

He received the Newcomer’s Award from the Photographic Society of Japan in 2011 and the Sagamihara New Photographer Award in 2015.

His works are held in the collections of institutions including the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Fukushima Prefectural Museum.

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