Motoyuki Shitamichi at George Eastman Museum

Alison Bradley Projects is delighted to announce that three of Motoyuki Shitamichi's photographs from his torii 鳥居 series have been acquired by the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. This acquisition marks the first time the artist’s work has entered into the collection of a public institution in the United States. 

torii is Shitamichi’s iconic photographic series that explores the fragility of national borders by documenting the remains of torii, or Shinto gates, throughout the Asia Pacific, traveling to locales within Taiwan, South Korea, the Northern Mariana Islands, Sakhalin, Northeastern China (referred to by colonial Japan as Manchuria). Searching for and capturing the now overgrown, abandoned, repurposed, or removed torii, these structures live on with new afterlives, as monuments of imperial longing that have shifted to have new meanings and uses based on the environments they still exist as part of. This year, Alison Bradley Projects was proud to present Shitamichi’s first solo exhibition in the US, which included the torii series, as well as the artist’s other recent series Okinawan Glass 沖縄硝子 and Tsunami Boulder 津波石.

 

Founded in 1947 and opened to the public in 1949, the George Eastman Museum is known today as the world's oldest photography museum, and a global leader in film preservation and photographic conservation. As such, we are thrilled for Shitamichi's crucial work to be held in such an esteemed and significant photography collection.

June 1, 2023