Yokosuka Story
- Artist: Miyako Ishiuchi
- Date: 1977
- Medium: Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
- Dimensions: image: 115 x 158 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
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About this artwork
This is the "Yokosuka Story" by Miyako Ishiuchi, a striking 1977 project that captures the shifting identity of a Japanese port town in a time of American military presence. The work is a grid of forty vintage black‑and‑white gelatin‑silver prints, each shot with deliberate grain and high contrast. Ishiuchi’s camera moves from a car or a corner of a street, framing tilted horizons, diagonal compositions and cropped streets that feel both intimate and disorienting. Her long exposures—sometimes up to thirty minutes—turn otherwise bright skies into dark, textured grey, giving the images a sense of memory and time. The series shows residents going about their day, a dog, even the photographer’s own shadow, hinting at the everyday coexistence of local life and foreign influence. As part of the Provoke movement, she and peers like Shomei Tomatsu pushed photography toward a more subjective, radical vision of post‑Hiroshima society, foregrounding alienation and the fluidity of identity.
See it in person
Yokosuka Story is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
