The photographers of these pictures—both made within coastal communities in Japan—found choreography in the repetitive movements of a group of people engaged in the same task. In a photograph from his series Taifū ga kita (A Typhoon Has Landed), Watabe captures a line of bodies straining in unison to move a boat. Iwase, who was born in Onjuku, a fishing village east of Tokyo on the Chiba Peninsula, made many photographs of the area's sea divers, known as ama, including this composition populated by their bending forms as they comb through the seaweed harvest.

Gallery label from

2025

Medium Gelatin silver print
Dimensions 7 1/8 × 14" (18.1 × 35.5 cm)
Credit Gift of Nihon Keizai Shimbun
Object number 242.1959
Department Photography

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