Leica Camera Japan is pleased to present an exhibition of photographs by Ichigo Sugawara, a highly-acclaimed Japanese photographer with a strong international reputation.

The exhibition will feature landscapes from Sugawara’s native Hokkaido, scenery he observed quietly and with a sense of longing as if searching for the hometown he left behind as a child. Captured through a deeply reflective gaze, his photographs portray quiet moments in the frontier land facing the Hidaka Mountains, where people and nature serenely coexist.

To create the exhibited works Sugawara used a unique wet-plate collodion process and inkjet prints. By combining classical techniques and modern technology, he delicately depicts the interplay of light and time.

Sugawara’s poetic and essence-focused perspective has been highly acclaimed in Europe and Asia, with a prolific exhibition record that includes numerous solo and international group shows. We invite you to experience his evocative world - one that gently evokes forgotten memories - firsthand at one of the exhibition venues.

I was born in Sapporo.

But due to my father’s work, we moved away when I was just two years old, so I retain virtually no memory of Hokkaido. Even so, I have always felt that Hokkaido is a special place, a place that keeps drawing me back with an invisible pull, like gravity. 

When people think of Hokkaido, they often imagine vast, natural beauty. Yet the history of modern Hokkaido began not with untouched nature, but with the harsh reality of settlement and the struggle to cultivate land in a harsh environment once covered in ancient forest. When Naoyuki Sakamoto (1906-1982), the Japanese painter known for his depictions of agricultural life, decided to settle in the Tokachi region, he reportedly chose a location from where he had the most beautiful view of the Hidaka Mountains. There, with the mountains as his compass, he farmed, painted, climbed and wrote. 

Through my photographs, I find myself drawn again and again to places and scenes born of the encounter between people and the vast natural world. It is as if, through my lens, I am searching for a sense of home.