Somehow Familiar Places (SIGNED)

Kazuo Kitai
Somehow Familiar Places (SIGNED)

Photographs: Kazuo Kitai

Publisher: Sokyu Sha

Year: 1990

Comments: Hardcover housed in a slipcase. 21,5 x 26,5 cm, b&w photographs. In very good condition other a small scratch on the slipcase. Signed by Kitai Kazuo.

The photographs gathered here were taken during the four years I spent in my late twenties, after I decided to put my work at Sanrizuka in 1970 behind me and set out on a journey somewhere.
At that time, I found joy simply in visiting unfamiliar villages and towns, observing the people living there and the country itself.
The people I saw as I walked through and passed by were mostly the elderly and children. The 1970s were a time of great economic upheaval in Japan: high economic growth, the oil crisis, and a strong yen. It was also an era when terms like "urban concentration of labor" and "rural depopulation" were frequently heard or seen in print. People in their prime working years abandoned their villages to seek jobs in city companies or went out to work during the off-season in agriculture. Because of this, every village felt deserted, and I suppose that's why only the elderly and children stood out to me.
The scenery of that era somehow resembled the landscape of my childhood memories, when I was separated from my father and rarely saw my mother.