This is Our Land, Vol.II

Dates: May 9 (Fri) — June 21 (Sat), 2025

Talk Session Hiroshi Yamazaki × Takeshi Takeda × Keijiro Kai (No Participation Fee or Reservations Required): May 10 (Sat), 2025 15:00-16:30

Reception Party: May 10 (Sat), 2025 17:00-18:30

Zen Foto Gallery is pleased to present “This is Our Land, Vol. II”, an exhibition of photographs by Hiroyoshi Yamazaki, Takeshi Takeda, and Keijiro Kai from May 9 (Friday) to June 21 (Saturday), 2025. This exhibition is the second installment of the “This is Our Land” group exhibition held at our gallery in 2021, which focused on the relationship between people and places that have a strong power like a magnetic field to attract people and continue to have a great impact on them. We would be delighted if you would join us for a talk event by the three artists and an opening reception on Saturday, May 10.

Hiroyoshi Yamazaki “Around Lake Town”

Hiroyoshi Yamazaki, a resident of Saitama Prefecture, has engaged in a long-term photographic documentation of Koshigaya Lake Town, beginning in 1997, before the commencement of the Lake Town project in Koshigaya City, to the present. His series "Around Lake Town" offers a glimpse into the transformation of the new town, which was developed around the Ōsagami Retention Basin and the Aeon Mall, into the vibrant community that we see today.

“Aeon Lake Town” is a huge shopping mall that strongly stimulates the desire to consume. A large number of customers flock in on weekends, even from far away, making Koshigaya the most visited place in Saitama Prefecture. This mall is clearly the reason why people are attracted to visit this city. However, while Aeon is undoubtedly convenient, there is a sense that something is missing. My photography at Lake Town is driven by curiosity: Is Lake Town sustainable? Having once been reset as cleared land, Lake Town will soon celebrate 20 years since the town was first opened. What will the landscape look like in the next 20 years?

— Hiroyoshi Yamazaki

Takeshi Takeda “A Kyoto Panorama”

Takeshi Takeda, a photographer based in Tokyo who is originally from Kyoto, has traveled to China, India, and other places with a rich historical heritage. There, he has sought to understand the roots of Japanese spiritual culture and has photographed the people who live there. He has also been thinking about how to photograph his hometown Kyoto, which has a long history as the capital of Japan. Inspired by an old Soviet panoramic camera he encountered during the Coronavirus pandemic, he compiled 100 black-and-white panoramic landscapes for this project. For this exhibition, he has selected original prints from these 100 works to be displayed.

It is said that five hundred years ago, the master swordsman Tsukahara Bokuden composed a poem in the garden of a temple called Hensho-ji in Sagano, Kyoto. The poem says, “In the pond of Hirosawa, the moon does not think about how it is reflected [in the water], it is simply being reflected; and the water does not think about how it is reflecting [the moon], it simply reflects.” This master swordsman, who lived during the Warring States period, expressed the life-and-death fight with real swords in the form of the moon and water blending into each other without being aware of the other. This poem suggests a way of looking beyond the boundaries of self and others to understand life from within, which could be seen in the manner of photography. The word “photograph” originated in Europe and means “light” [photo] and “drawing” [graph], but it was translated as “shashin” [sha means “reflect”; shin means “truth” or “reality”] when it was introduced to Japan. Perhaps there was something in the sensibilities of the Japanese people at the time that made them feel more comfortable with the word “shashin” [true reflection of reality] than the word “koga” [light drawing]. What is the world? What is photography? I felt that the inner voice of my soul led me back to my hometown and further into the source of my Japanese and, consequently, my oriental sensibilities.

— Takeshi Takeda

Keijiro Kai “Ashes to Ashes”

Keijiro Kai is a photographer who has been photographing traditional fighting festivals held in various parts of the world before the modern concept of sports was born, while immersing himself in such festivals, and has produced works that delve into the essential question about “human life” with his photographs. For this exhibition, he will present “Ashes to Ashes”, his latest work, photographed between 2018 and 2023 at the Toba Fire Festival held at the Toba Shimmeisha Shrine in Nishio, Aichi Prefecture, which is said to have a history of 1,200 years. This work will also be exhibited in his solo exhibition “Down to the Bone”, the main program of the Kyotographie International Photography Festival, which will be held from April 12 to May 11, at Kurochiku Makura Building, Kyoto.

Fire never ages or grows mossy — it is always old, new, and perpetual. For 1,200 years the same fire has emerged every year and raged through this town. The participants are dressed in the traditional costumes passed down from their ancestors, crafted from narrow nobori flags — they unknowingly establish a connection with the past as they immerse themselves in a fire identical to that witnessed 1,200 years ago. In this place, the concept of time, which is imperceptible, becomes interconnected with the chaos, and the fundamental human desire for life, the history of how we live and how we have lived, as well as the future of human existence, all are intertwined.

— Keijiro Kai

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Artist Profile

Hiroyoshi YAMAZAKI

Hiroyoshi Yamazaki was born in 1956 in Saitama, Japan. In 1980, after completing his studies at Keio University, Faculty of Letters, Department of Philosophy, he began working at a city government office and was assigned to the Public Affairs Division, where he used an SLR camera for the first time. He turned to photography in 1984, inspired by Michio Yamauchi’s street snapshots. In 1986, he participated in Foto Session ’86 and had the privilege of studying under Daido Moriyama. Yamazaki then graduated from the Tokyo Photographic College, Second Department of Photojournalism in 1987. From 2012 to 2021, he taught part-time at the Nippon Photography Institute. Since 2017, he has been a running member of Gallery Yocto and has organised 12 photo exhibitions of his “Lake Town” series. His previous publications include Diary — Portraits of Mother and Garden (2015, Ohsumi Shoten), Crossroad (2019, Sokyusha) and Smell on the Street (2022, Sokyusha).

Takeshi TAKEDA

Born in Kyoto in 1974, Takeshi Takeda graduated from the School of Theology at Doshisha University. During his studies, he took a year off to travel around the Australian continent with a single-lens reflex camera. After returning to Japan, he studied photography with Takao Inoue. In 1997, he participated in the Japan-China joint research project “The Search for the Yangtze River Civilization” as a documentary photographer, covering various parts of China over five years. In 2001, Takeda became an independent freelance photographer, continuing his travels in China and Asia in search of the roots of Japanese spiritual culture. He received the Konica Minolta Foto Premio Grand Prize in 2010 and the Kyoto Prefecture Culture Award Encouragement Prize in 2014. His publications include 6,300 Kilometers on the Yangtze (Tosei-sha, 2021), Memoirs of the Peach Blossom Land: Ten Years with the People of Basha Village in China (Shinchosha, 2015), Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse [Japanese Edition with Photographs] (Shinchosha, 2013), Journey Along the Ancient Tea Horse Road (Tankosha, 2010), and Chang Jiang (Mitsumura Suiko Shoin, 2005).

Keijiro KAI

Born in Fukuoka in 1974, Kai graduated from the College of Science and Technology of Nihon University with a specialization in Oceanic Architecture and Engineering in 1997, and from the Tokyo College of Photography in 2002. He is currently an adjunct professor at the Tokyo College of Photography.

Kai's photographs take the viewer into the crowds of traditional fighting or sporting rituals all around the world that predate our modern concept of “sport”. By taking a close look at human interaction in these traditional settings, Kai’s photographs offer us an insight into the very essence of human life. He has participated in group exhibitions at the Daegu Photo Biennale (South Korea, 2016), Taipei Photo (Taiwan, 2018), the Noorderlicht International Photography Festival (Netherlands, 2019), and the T3 Photo Festival Tokyo (Japan, 2024) and has held numerous solo exhibitions in Japan. His solo exhibition, "Down to the Bone", is scheduled to be held at the Kyotographie Kyoto International Photography Festival in 2025.

His photobook publications include “Shrove Tuesday” (Totem Pole Photo Gallery, 2013), “Wounded Bears” (Totem Pole Photo Gallery, 2016), “Down to the Bone” (Shinjuku Shobo, 2020), and “Clothed in Sunny Finery” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2023). He won the 28th Society of Photography Award for “Wounded Bears” and “Down to the Bone” in 2016; the 20th Sagamihara Photography Award for his book “Down to the Bone” in 2020; and the 45th Nobuo Ina Award for his exhibition “Down to the Bone” at the Nikon Salon in 2021.