Katsuhiro Noguchi Photography Exhibition “Fukushima Flowers”

The Nippon Gallery at The Nippon Club is pleased to host Photography Exhibition by Katsuhiro Noguchi, the first Japanese winner of the grand prize at Nikon Photography Contest 2014-2015. The photos of “Flowers of Fukushima” taken by Noguchi won the prize out of around 89,000 works sent to a competition.

For Noguchi, having witnessed the destruction of Nature wreaked by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, it was the Fukushima flowers, always near at hand but thus far overlooked, that brought solace amid the chaotic upheaval at the time. Noguchi has been ceaselessly photographing those Fukushima flowers ever since, and now wishes to show us the strength and beauty that he has been rediscovering through his viewfinder, and to which he would like to entrust the future.

Noguchi said: whenever I am behind the lens, two hopes occupy the corner of my mind: to brighten the city and to encourage the people with flowers. The Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent nuclear accidents significantly impacted our quiet life, and as a resident of Fukushima, my future was also heavily shrouded in uncertainty. And yet, even in that situation, the plants in the fields sprouted the same as ever, carrying our hopes with them.

Noguchi’s works allow us to detach ourselves from the subject’s background and appreciate the complex beauty of the form and coloring of the flowers and leaves, or of the branches themselves. It can also be said that the expression of the flowers woven by light and shade stems from Noguchi’s deep appreciation of the objects shaped by Nature. The flowers we see in Noguchi’s works link up with those we have seen in bloom in the past, bringing back half-forgotten memories.

Noguchi’s work now is motivated by wanting as many people as possible to feel the pleasure of flowers, which can be shared regardless of language barriers, and of differences in nationality, culture, and opinion. It is his hope that the people who see “Fukushima Flowers” will feel that Fukushima is a place where beautiful flowers grow, and understand that those who live there continue to feel pride in their homeland.

【Biography】
Photographer Katsuhiro Noguchi was born in the town of Inawashiro in Fukushima Prefecture in 1959. Noguchi is the creator of an exhibition with the theme of “Making the World Smile with the Beauty of Fukushima Flowers” and of the “Fukushima Flowers” series. “Fukushima Flowers” was featured in the Japanese Government Pavilion at the Netherlands International Horticultural Exhibition “Floriade” in 2012.

His works were also adopted for JR East’s main visual display during the Fukushima Prefecture tourism campaign “Fukushima ~ Where Happiness is in Full Bloom” held from 2014 to 2016, and were seen in designs on posters, in the station concourse, and on train carriages.

The fuselage of a specially-decorated ANA airplane known as the “Tohoku Flower Jet” (Boeing 737-800), which came into service in May, 2016, was designed using works based on Tohoku flowers.

The ANA counter and boarding ramp at Fukushima Airport are decorated with floral works, and there is a permanent “Katsuhiro Noguchi Fukushima Flowers Gallery” on the first floor of the International Terminal.

Noguchi has held exhibitions of his photography at venues including the Canon Galleries in Ginza, Osaka, Sendai, and Sapporo, and Narita International Airport. He has also held exhibitions overseas in Britain, Paris, Brazil, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

His publications include “This Place ~ an Island of Flowers” (jacket description by Shuntaro Tanikawa) and “You’re Alive, Keep on Living” (edited by Big Palette Fukushima Evacuation Center Publishing Committee).

He was awarded the Grand Prize for the Still Photography section at the 35^th Nikon Photography Contest 2014 to 2015.