AMSTERDAM.- Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography is presenting Kusukazu Uraguchi. Shima no Ama, an exhibition of eighty captivating black and white photographs selected from the monumental archive of this Japanese photographer. From the mid-1950s onwards Kusukazu Uraguchi (1922-1988) devoted thirty years of his life to photographing the ama, an all-female community of Japanese fisherwomen and divers in the Shima region where he was born. His admiring gaze is a powerful testimonial to their ever-dwindling vocation. The exhibition was first shown in 2024 during the international photo festival Les Rencontres d’Arles, and has been augmented in Huis Marseille with additional photographs, a new video compilation, and recently restored vintage wooden panels.



Women of the sea


The ama, Japanese ‘women of the sea’, have populated the coasts of the Shima region for more than three thousand years, free-diving for seaweed and abalone (a marine mollusc regarded as a delicacy). Their unique role in the Japanese imagination, their sensual link with the sea, and their fearlessness and sovereignty have inspired poets and artists for centuries. Kusukazu Uraguchi himself came from Shima (in the Mie prefecture) on the South Pacific, and devoted more than thirty years to documenting the life of the ama in this region in all its diversity: photographs of deep-sea dives, harvesting along the coast, portraits, images of communal life on the beach and in the amagoya – exclusively female enclaves – and of their daily practice of Shintoism, culminating in matsuri (summer festivals). His photographs depict the ama’s ancient practices, and show their energy at every moment. Inspired by their vitality and the trust they placed in him, he developed an intense and expressive idiom. Black-and-white contrasts, unusual framing, and gestures and actions that show the women’s spontaneity, anchor the ama in their time – between 1960 and 1980 in particular – and simultaneously pay homage to their strong, assertive femininity.

Tens of thousands of negatives

Uraguchi’s archive, which comprises tens of thousands of negatives and forms the point of departure for this exhibition, had not been examined since his death. The rediscovery of this remarkable material is thanks to Sonia Voss, who took this initiative, delved into the archive, compiled the exhibition in Arles, and is also guest curator of the exhibition in Huis Marseille. The images also allow us to see Japanese photography through one of its key aspects, namely amateur photography, of which Uraguchi was a brilliant representative, maintaining links with a variety of photo club networks.

Underwater camera

To take his underwater photographs Uraguchi made use of the Nikonos, a camera that Nikon brought, specially for this purpose, onto the market in 1963. He bought one immediately, and used it from 1965 to document the ama’s solitary underwater hunts. Uraguchi is unlikely to have possessed the physical capacity to dive alongside the most experienced ama – the funado – who wore weighted belts and dived to depths of 18, 24, or even thirty metres, holding their breath for as long as two minutes. He did, however, accompany a number of kachido (‘those who go by foot’) and okedo (‘those who take tubs into the water’), who travelled together on a boat. They dived to a depth of ten metres, posing just as many technical challenges to their skill: apart from the risk to lungs and ears, they had to deal with temperature differences, forests of tangled seaweed, and the narrow caves where abalone nestled.

Vintage panels


At his exhibitions Uraguchi often presented his prints on wooden panels in two standard sizes, mounted on a base constructed by a craftsman from Shima. Thanks to the artist’s son, a number of these original panels have been preserved. In Huis Marseille six of these vintage panels can been admired, three of which were restored specially for presentation in Amsterdam and have never been on display in Europe before.

Publication


The exhibition in Arles was accompanied by the book Shima no Ama, and this will be reprinted specially for the exhibition in Huis Marseille. It is published by Atelier EXB in two language editions, English and French. The texts are by photographer and visual anthropologist Chihiro Minato and Sonia Voss, under the editorship of Sonia Voss.

The curator

The author and curator Sonia Voss (1978) lives and works in Paris and Berlin. Her exploration of East German photography led to the exhibition Restless Bodies (Rencontres d’Arles, 2019) and several related books published at Editions Xavier Barral/Atelier EXB, Koenig Books, and Hatje Cantz. Her research has since extended to Eastern Europe. She curated the Louis Roederer Discovery Award at the Rencontres d’Arles 2021. She also accompanies artists such as Isabelle Le Minh and Tarrah Krajnak. Occasionally, she delves into archives, such as that of George Shiras, whom she introduced to the public in 2016 (In the Heart of the Dark Night, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris).

Guest curator: Sonia Voss