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  ©Asako Narahashi

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  ©Asako Narahashi

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  ©Asako Narahashi

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  ©Asako Narahashi

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  ©Asako Narahashi

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  ©Asako Narahashi

PGI is pleased to present 1961 – They Were Standing There, the gallery’s second exhibition of work by Japanese photographer Asako Narahashi.

Asako Narahashi joined Daido Moriyama’s Photo Session workshop in the mid-1980s while still a student. After graduating in 1989, she held about ten group and solo exhibitions, which marked the beginning of her career as a photographer. Narahashi’s photography involved frequent trips to Okinawa and other regions of Japan. In 1990, driven by her strong desire to present her work through exhibitions, Narahashi opened the gallery 03Fotos in Tokyo.

         In 1997, she published her first photo book, Nu E (Sokyusha), followed by Funiculi Funicula (Sokyusha) in 2003. Around 2000, Narahashi began to focus on water as a consistent theme in her photography. The series was later compiled into the photo book half awake and half asleep in the water (2007), which earned her worldwide critical acclaim and led to numerous international exhibitions and publications. Narahashi has continued to create series based on the theme of water, such as Coming Closer and Getting Further Away and Ever After.

This exhibition consists of works from Asako Narahashi’s new series 1961 – They Were Standing There. Throughout the summer of 2024, Narahashi sorted through and created new prints from photographs taken by her father, Kunitake Narahashi, during his travels to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1961.

         During a conversation about the continuing deterioration of old negatives, Asako Narahashi mentioned a cardboard box of old albums. The photographs in these albums, it turned out, were not taken by Narahashi herself, but by her father, documenting his trip to the World Congress of Trade Unions in Moscow (then the Soviet Union) and an international printing workers conference in Leipzig (then East Germany) in 1961. The negatives show people on the street, landscapes shot through train windows, parks and city squares, cars and buildings that no longer exist, conferences and meetings, printing plants, and various other scenes from the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, and China.

         In 2024, Asako Narahashi has carefully selected and printed these photographs taken by her father sixty-three years ago. Marked by signs of vinegar syndrome, emulsion peeling, scratches, and heavy film grain, the images capture a palpable sense of the changes that have occurred since then in technology, nations, borders, and identities. Floating somewhere between photography and abstract painting, 1961 – They Were Standing There depicts scenes that neither Kunitake Narahashi, who took the photographs, nor his daughter Asako Narahashi, who printed them, could have foreseen.

All works in the exhibition are silver-gelatin prints.

1961―They Were Standing There

Asako Narahashi

I always knew they were there in the cardboard box. I had opened it before, once, but I was so overwhelmed by the albums and their yellowed covers that I could only take a quick look through them before closing the box again.

There were eight photo albums in all, seven in black and white, the other in colour, each containing contact sheets and negatives from about ten to twelve rolls of film. The contact sheets in the black and white albums were still properly glued in, making it easy to check them against the negatives, although the 35mm and half-frame negatives were all mixed up together. The negatives in the colour album had become almost completely transparent, their images impossible to see, and the corresponding contact sheets had lost all colour.

I’d heard that my father had been to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe when I was a child. There was even an anecdote told in the family that he’d came home looking rough as a bear and scaring us children to tears, but I have no memory of it. How long have I thought about opening the box again? It has stayed with me for over twenty years now, untouched through numerous moves and the death of my father. Family matters have never been a priority for me, nor something to be shared in public. But I realised that unless someone went through them, the albums would eventually be thrown away, their photos left unseen. I found the resolve to look through them again, at first with hesitation, soon with detached routine.

The stench of acetic acid that filled the room was stronger than I had imagined. The brittle paper sleeves holding the negatives crackled at each touch, as if they would tear at any moment. It felt as if I was doing something I shouldn’t, but I knew I had no choice. There was no one else to do this but me. If I was going to make any prints at all, I had to do it now, while I could still work in the darkroom. And so, in the summer of 2024, I began my work.

My father left behind countless diaries and journals. One day, while sorting through his belongings and deciding what to throw away, I came across several notebooks that looked older than the others. I was about to put them on the pile of things to be thrown away but then noticed the year written on them – 1961.

There were three of them. At the back, my father had carefully listed the details of each photograph he had taken: the negative number, the date, the location, and a brief description. He had even noted which camera he had used, Pen or Pentax, meaning half-frame or 35mm.

With this, I thought, I could compare the albums with my father’s notes and match each photo to a date and location. But it was not that easy – the albums weren’t arranged in any order, and some of the information my father had written down seemed questionable to me. The process was frustrating, but I remained hopeful that things would clear up as I continued.

Over the course of the summer I made rough prints of about three hundred photographs. By coincidence, about half of them were from 35mm negatives, and the other half from half-frames. Since then, I have been making 8×10 and 11×14 prints, taking short breaks from time to time before reviewing the contact sheets again and printing any photos I may have missed.

Each time I print, there are new surprises and discoveries. Some of the negatives continue to change and deteriorate, almost as if they’re alive. My simple, basic approach – to print only what I want to print, only when I feel like it – seems particularly right for this series.

[Related Exhibition]

Drifting but Never Sinking 02
May 13 − May 31, 2025     IG Photo Gallery
Open: Tue〜Sat　11:00～18:30

Asako Narahashi

Born in Tokyo. Asako Narahashi graduated in Fine Arts from Waseda University’s School of Letters, Art, and Science. In 1989, she held her first solo exhibition Dawn in Spring. The following year, she opened the gallery 03FOTOS (1990–2001) as a place to present her own work. In 1997, she published her debut photobook NU E and in 2003 the book Funiculi Funicula, consisting of color snapshots. Around the year 2000, Narahashi began to take photographs of water. She later published them in the book half awake and half asleep in the water (2007) and continued to develop the theme in her series Ever After and Coming Closer and Getting Further Away. Narahashi has continued to produce numerous photobooks and exhibited her works throughout the world. Her awards include the Newcomer’s Award of the Photographic Society of Japan in 1998, the Society of Photography Award in 2004, and the Higashikawa Awards for Domestic Award in 2008.

English translation by Robert Zetzsche