Admission fee free

Matsumura Kumi (1947-) first visited Okinawa under the American administration in 1968 after graduating from Tokyo University of Photography (now Tokyo Polytechnic University). The following year, they moved to Okinawa and settled in Okinawa, which was about to “return” to the mainland.
In Okinawa at the time, which was a sortie base in the Vietnam War, contradictions lurking in the Japan-US security system erupted, and young photographers captured various events that occurred in this area on camera so as to accept the swell of “return” with their whole body.
Anti-base struggles, strikes by US military base workers and all military laborers, self-defense force training, “base town” that flourished during the Vietnam War, leprosy sanatorium/airakuen, remote island lifestyle, festivals, ocean expo... the vast amount of photographs taken amidst the conflict of being a “Yamatonchu (Yamato people)” in an era where there were still few female photographers, have heat and spread as if they were gradually packed into Okinawa in the 70s, and their firing range has reached Okinawan immigrants in South America.
The US military base left as a scar from the Asia-Pacific War had engulfed Okinawa in the midst of a new war called the Vietnam War. If you recall that the reason for immigration from Okinawa to South America was also a serious economic recession during World War I and land takeover by the US military, it can be said that what Matsumura's lens tried to capture was the appearance of people living with their feet on the ground despite the scars of war.
Although the collection of essays “Unrequited Love Shutter: My 10-Year Record of Okinawa” was published in the 1980s, it was a while away from Okinawa and photography. Shooting resumed in 2006, and the first photo book “To the Island Beyond 1969-1980” was also published in 2026. This exhibition, which is her first solo exhibition at her alma mater, is a milestone in Matsumura's “Journey to Meet Again” with Okinawa.

●Talk event
5/12 (Tue) 18:30 to 19:45
Tokyo Polytechnic University Building 2 B1F Multimedia Lecture Room
Speaker: Matsumura Kumi (photographer) /Minato Chihiro (Tama Art University Professor) /Ohara Masashi (Associate Professor, Tokyo Polytechnic University)


Organizer: Tokyo Polytechnic University Faculty of Art
Planning and supervision: Masashi Ohara (Shadai Gallery Steering Committee Member)

https://www.shadai.t-kougei.ac.jp/%e6%9d%be%e6%9d%91%e4%b9%85%e7%be%8e%e5%86%99%e7%9c%9f%e5%b1%95%e3%80%8c%e6%b2%96%e7%b8%84%e3%81%8b%e3%82%89%e3%80%88%e6%b2%96%e7%b8%84%e3%80%89%e3%81%b8%e3%80%801969-79%e3%80%8d/