ATSUSHI FUKUSHIMA 福島あつし
Supported by Fujifilm
In agriculture the summer harvest marks an intense period of labour and transition. Atsushi Fukushima captures the surge of life-and-death energy that erupts on the farm - a place where order and disorder coexist
Atsushi Fukushima is not your average photographer. Since graduating university in 2004, he has worked as a bento delivery driver, a farmer, and trekked the length of Japan - all while photographing the people and places he encountered.
In this exhibition, Fukushima will present a body of work made during the three years he spent working on a farm. "I naturally expected a peaceful life,'' he writes. "But the farm was a completely different world. We were constantly working to raise our labour value, pouring all our resources - money, ideas, and passion - into the work and pushing the business forward. We lived with a sense of challenge and purpose!"
This exhibition marks the project's first major presentation, as well as Fukushima's return to KYOTOGRAPHIE's main programme. In 2020, he exhibited his KG+ SELECT Award-winning project, I Deliver Bento Boxes to the Houses of Old People Living Alone. For this follow-up show, Fukushima hopes to immerse viewers into the harvests that he documented, offering further engagement through events in the venue's kitchen space.
© Atsushi Fukushima
© Atsushi Fukushima
© Atsushi Fukushima
© Atsushi Fukushima
artist アーティスト
Atsushi Fukushima 福島あつし
Atsushi Fukushima
After graduating from the Photography Department at Osaka University of Arts, Fukushima spent ten years delivering bentos to the elderly. He built a relationship with many of his clients, eventually photographing them for a body of work titled I Deliver Bento Boxes to the Houses of Old People Living Alone. The following year, a photobook of the same title was published by Seigensha. The project won the KG＋SELECT Award 2019, and the following year, he held a photography exhibition as part of KYOTOGRAPHIE’s main programme. Alongside his agricultural work, he is currently working on new projects that speak to the philosophy of life as both powerful and beautiful.