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Photo Book

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By Akihiko Okamura
Publisher: Xavier Barral
Publication date: 2024
Print length: 157 pages
Language: French
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This book brings together, for the first time, Akihiko Okamura's work in Ireland, coinciding with the digitization of this nearly unheard-of corpus, accompanied by texts that contextualize his work within the history of the time and the photographic medium.

During the Troubles, the struggle for independence that lasted from 1969 to 1998, Northern Ireland attracted a large number of foreign photojournalists who came to document the events. Some of them found a subject that personally resonated with them, prompting them to go beyond the codes of photojournalism. This was the case for Japanese photographer Akihiko Okamura, who produced a unique and remarkable body of work in color during the early years of the conflict, yet remains curiously unknown today.

Born in Tokyo in 1929, Akihiko Okamura distinguished himself as one of the great war photographers of his generation, notably operating in Vietnam in the early 1960s. He is still highly respected in Japan, but his work and experience in Ireland, essential both to his oeuvre and his personal life, have been little explored. Okamura arrived on the island with his family in 1969 and lived there until his death in 1985. He photographed his daily life and surroundings but quickly became interested in the northern part of the country and its struggle for independence.

His attachment to this country and its history led him to produce one of the most significant photographic works by a foreign photographer, blending the simplicity of framing and subject matter, very Japanese, with a compositional strength for more violent subjects. In Ireland, he moved away from photojournalism to develop a more personal testimony. The choice to work in color, while most reports of the time were in black and white, and to favor soft tones, as if timeless, contrasted with the violence of the era. His images seem detached from reality. He perceived the permanence of daily life amidst the impermanence of war.
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