スウェーデン人フォトグラファーで映像作家のアンダース・エドストローム（Anders Edström）の作品集。京都府の北の山奥にある小さな村、塩谷村での生活を23年もの間撮影した記録がまとめられた1冊。作者は1993年に初めてこの地に訪れ、以来断続的に通っている。わずか47人の村民が米やキノコ、お茶の栽培などその土地の伝統的な生活を営む村で、作者は妻の家族に焦点を当てた。バスルームのバケツ、充電器のついた古いノートパソコン、電車の中、駐車場など、細々としたものから、その穏やかな変化、そしてこの辺境の村の生活を形成する自然の移ろいまで、一つ一つ丁寧に写し取っていった。当初は旅の記録でしかなかったが、2008年のクリスマスに妻の祖母へ15年分の写真をまとめたアルバムをプレゼントしたことから、本作は一つのプロジェクトとなった。日常生活の親密な年代記、時間の経過やそこに伴う喪失感、そして妻の祖父母の他界とコミュニティにおける死に伴う儀式。家族写真としての側面でもあり、村の人々とその土地についての痛烈な肖像画でもある。

作者と長年コラボレーションを行なってきた映画監督のC.W. ウィンター（C.W. Winter）によるエッセイを収録。2人は共同監督作品として8時間に及ぶ映像作品『仕事と日（塩谷の谷間で）』を制作し、2020年にベルリン国際映画祭「エンカウンターズ」部門最優秀賞を受賞。日本では第21回東京フィルメックス（2020年）、第14回恵比寿映像祭（2022年）で上映された。

SCREENING:

C.W.ウィンター＆アンダース・エドストローム《仕事と日（塩谷の谷間で）》［特別上映］
日時：2月11日（金・祝）
時間：11:00-
開催場所：東京都写真美術館1Fホール
詳細
※本上映は終了いたしました

The publication of Shiotani, a 23-year chronicle of life in a remote Japanese village by acclaimed Swedish photographer, Anders Edström. The book, which is published in 2021, documents the life and times of Edström’s wife’s family and the small village of Shiotani, which is twenty-nine miles away from even the outskirts of Kyoto, Japan’s second city. Edström made his first visit there in 1993 and has continued to do so intermittently. Shiotani is comprised of only forty-seven inhabitants and most of the people who live there still farm traditionally, harvesting rice, tea and mushrooms. The first pictures he took there were no more than a record of his trip. It only became an artistic project fifteen years later in the Christmas of 2008 when he made up a photo album for his wife’s grandmother.

Opening with rural vistas where houses and their inhabitants make only occasional interventions on the landscape, the book goes on to focus on the family’s day to day activities. Edström brings the viewer on family trips, recording the train rides, car parks and lunch tables with as much care as he records the mountains and the details of the landscape around them. From late nights drinking to the passing of time and the losses that accompany it the focus of his photography remains on his extended family. Edström and his camera bear witness to the passing of both of his wife’s grandparents, and the rituals that accompany death in the rural community.

Over the twenty-three years this book covers, Edström notes that, ‘There is a sense of change, but of slow change, a pace and energy quite different from my long-time residence in Tokyo. The village has a sense of isolation. When I first visited, my mother-in-law talked about the American soldiers giving them chocolate as they trooped past, but when I arrived, they hadn’t seen a Westerner in a long time, and they were all very curious. They were curious, but also very welcoming, quickly becoming used to me and learning not to react to me taking pictures.’

For Edström, ‘It’s also not about one picture; the sequence of pictures is so important for me, [and deciding] which ones go together.’ In an essay which accompanies the book, writer and musician Jeff Rian described the layout of the photographs as ‘story-board like’, and indeed the images also inspired another project, The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin), in which his wife’s family play themselves in a narrative, near documentary about the life of vegetable farmer Tayoko, and her dying husband. An eight-hour long narrative film created with his long-time collaborator C.W. Winter, who has also contributed an essay to the book, it won a Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and will be shown on 12 September 2021 at the ICA London as part of the Open City Documentary Festival.