Untitled, from the "Rasen Kaigan" series

About the Photographer

Shiga, Lieko

Japanese, b. 1980

Lieko Shiga photographed Kitakama, a small coastal city in Miyagi Prefecture in Japan. The town is mostly populated by farming families who have spent generations on the land. In 2011 the Tohoku tsunami devastated the coastal town and many of the residents’ possessions and personal photographs were washed along the shore or otherwise lost at sea. Rasen Kaigan depicts the surreal, postapocalyptic vision of a real place and populace who have endured unthinkable tragedy. Informed by the question of what it means to no longer be able to live in one’s home, Shiga documents the place as a lived reality in the shadows of its former way of life. She has been included in numerous exhibitions, such as the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2014); The National Art Center, Tokyo, Japan (2013); the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Russia (2012), among others.