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  ©Kiyoshi Yagi

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  ©Kiyoshi Yagi

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  ©Kiyoshi Yagi

PGI is pleased to present “Reminiscence of the Tundra,” its fifth exhibition of works by Kiyoshi Yagi.

Since 2004, Kiyoshi Yagi has been photographing the daily life, culture and natural environment of Eskimos, Thules, Aleuts, and other indigenous peoples living in the harsh conditions of the northernmost regions of the world. During his photographic travels, Yagi envisions the finished print in his mind as he takes his photographs. Back home, the work in the darkroom is of great importance: “When I make the prints, I can go back to who I was at the time and place I took the pictures and think about who I am today.” Through these processes and Yagi’s experiences, his artwork captures a sense of “sila”, a fundamental concept in Inuit languages that refers to the spirit and interconnectedness of the world.

In January 2024, Yagi publishes his new book, Reminiscence of the Tundra—Ancient Stories of the Eskimos, for which he deciphered and translated songs, magic words, stories and other oral Eskimo folklore originally collected by polar explorer and anthropologist Knut Rasmussen in the early 20^th century. To celebrate the publication of the book, the exhibition at PGI combines Yagi’s photographs with selected texts.

The photographs are presented as platinum palladium prints on Gampi paper, enlarged from the original negatives. Throughout his career, Yagi has continually challenged and improved his approach to analog film printing, arriving at a process that faithfully reproduces the texture of the surfaces, landscapes, and materials captured by his 8×10 large-format camera. The exhibition also includes an additional ten color prints from Yagi’s earlier series Across the Arctic 1994-2007, which focuses primarily on the everyday life of Eskimos..

As a combination of photographs and translated texts, Kiyoshi Yagi’s Reminiscence of the Tundra exhibition conveys the culture and spirit of the indigenous people with immediacy and depth.

The exhibition consists of approximately twelve platinum palladium prints and ten color prints.

Reminiscences of the Tundra

“In the very first times there was no light on earth. Everything was in darkness, the lands could not be seen, the animals could not be seen. And still, both people and animals lived on the earth, but there was no difference between them. They lived promiscuously: A person could become an animal, and an animal could become a human being.” *

The above passage is part of a creation myth told by the Netsilik, a group of Canadian Inuit who live near the North Pole. Their myths, songs and poems tell of the struggle of the elders who tried to transform the world of chaos into a more humane place. These stories, passed down orally from generation to generation, have shaped their culture and spiritual world. In their world, everything in the natural realm has existed since the beginning of time.

            The harsh and seemingly inhospitable landscapes of the Arctic have been home to human life since prehistoric times, and they still hold a wealth of untold history. Through photographs and written accounts of Eskimos, this exhibition attempts to unravel fragments of the distant memories of the Arctic and Subarctic indigenous peoples.

Kiyoshi Yagi

* RASMUSSEN, KNUD. (1931). THE NETSILIK ESKIMOS: SOCIAL LIFE AND SPIRITUAL CULTURE (Report of the fifth Thule expedition 1921-24; Vol.8 No.1-2)

 The Netsilik elders’anecdotes, magic words, and other written accounts exhibited with the photographs were selected from the “Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921-24” (1931) by Danish explorer and anthropologist Knud Rasmussen.

Regarding the term “Eskimo”

In this exhibition, “Eskimo” is used as a collective term for the indigenous groups of the Kalaallit (Greenland), Inuit (Canada), Inupiat (western and northern Alaska), and Yupiit (southwestern Alaska).

The Kalaallit of Greenland, the Inuit of Canada, and the Inupiat of Alaska belong to the same ethnic group and speak a common language, Inuktitut. The Yupiit are an ethnic group whose language is derived from the same proto-Eskimo language as Inuktitut. However, the Inuktitut and Yupik languages are too different to be mutually intelligible.

English translation by Robert Zetzsche

Kiyoshi Yagi

Born in Nagano, Japan in 1968. After graduating from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in journalism, he studied under Takeshi Mizukoshi, a Japanese nature photographer. He has been traveling to arctic regions to photograph indigenous peoples, the Eskimo and the Aleut as well as the nature surrounding them with a large format camera since 1994. He produces his prints using platinum paper. He was the recipient of the Photographic Society of Japan, Newcomer’s Award in 2004 and the Tabuchi Yukio Award 2nd prize in 2005. He published his first book sila in 2011.