Excluded from the human diet and useless for clothing or shelter, the undergrowth thrives and engulfs human existence. It transforms under the snow, rain, wind and sunlight.

Children play Tarzan in the undergrowth or mountain thickets. When the harvest moon appears, they go out to pick the pampass grass.

I pushed my way through the swirling sea of grass. The darkness beneath the thick ivy soothed me. Whenever my parents scolded me, whenever I felt a sense of failure, I would think "Ah, I'm all alone," and go there to hide. It was such a scary place. One day, the smell of chestnuts in the bush told me that I had grown up.

Before humans and their food, clothing and shelter, there was the undergrowth.

-Shoko Hashimoto, Afterword Undergrowth.

Artist Profile

Shoko HASHIMOTO

Born in Ishinomaki in 1939, Hashimoto graduated from Nihon University, College of Art in 1964, specializing in photography. In 1974, he received the Newcomer Award from the Photographic Society of Japan with his photobook “Goze” (Nora-sha). In the same year, the series was selected for the “15 Photographers” exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and collected by the museum. Hashimoto actively photographed Lee Dynasty folk paintings in Korea from 1979 to 1981. He had travelled to Nagano, Yamagata, Fukuoka, Kumamoto, Yamanashi and Miyagi prefectures to document the folk customs of Japan that were gradually disappearing as a photojournalist. Since 2011, he has regularly returned to photograph his hometown, Ishinomaki, which was devastated by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. His recent solo exhibitions include: “Goze” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2013; Zeit-Foto Salon, 2014), “Nishiyama Onsen — Empire of Nakedness” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2014), “A Village Lullaby” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2015), “Biwa Houshi” (Zeit-Foto Salon, 2016), “Literary Scholars” (Sokyusha, 2017), “Goze” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2020), “Goze — Shoko Hashimoto” (Ikeda Art Museum, Niigata, 2022), and “Goze” (AN-A Fundación, Barcelona, 2022). His publications include: “Goze” (Aron Shobo, 1988), “Kitakami River” (Shumpusha, 2014), “Nishiyama Onsen” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2014), “Kitakami River New Edition” (Shumpusha, 2015), “Undergrowth” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2016), “San’ya 1968.8.1–8.20” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2017), “Goze Asahigraph Reprint” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2019) and “Goze” (New Complete Edition, Zen Foto Gallery, 2021).

Gallery Exhibitions