OKINAWA 1969–2025
Through the Eyes of Two Photographers
Through the Eyes of Two Photographers
This may be a personal note, but last year I visited Okinawa for the first time in my life.
Since then, I’ve developed a strong interest in the region. So when I heard that RVB Books, whose titles IACK has long carried, was publishing a new photobook on Okinawa, I eagerly awaited its arrival.
The French artist Victoire Thierrée first encountered Okinawa through the Japanese photographer Shomei Tomatsu’s seminal photobook OKINAWA Okinawa OKINAWA: “It is not that there are bases in Okinawa, but rather that Okinawa exists inside the bases” (Shaken, 1969), a work that stands as one of the most important postwar Japanese photographic records.
Inspired by this book, Thierrée travelled to Okinawa herself, where she witnessed the enduring presence of U.S. military bases and the powerful, encompassing force of the natural landscape.
Thierrée began exploring how to capture the complexity of territorial tensions within a small island nation, and the force of a nature vast enough to subsume even these frictions—using a contemporary photographic approach while building upon Tomatsu’s legacy.
OKINAWA Okinawa OKINAWA (Shaken, 1969)
She began by photographing aircraft in flight over 32 base areas, along with the surrounding natural scenery. These grainy, striking, vertically framed black-and-white images evoke not only Tomatsu but also bring to mind the work of Takuma Nakahira or Wolfgang Tillmans.
OKINAWA!! by Victoire Thierrée (RVB Books, 2025)
Going beyond the typical framework of documentary photography, Thierrée added further layers of depth by researching the records of Egbert H. Walker (1899–1991), a botanist who worked in the postwar era.
As part of a specimen collection program conducted by U.S. military personnel, Walker oversaw the gathering of natural samples—plants, minerals, corals, and more—which were documented in detail. In 1951 alone, more than 8,000 plant specimens were collected from regions that included former battlefields of the Okinawa campaign. Thierrée selected 40 herbarium samples from this archive and rephotographed them on monochrome film.
Roughly taped to sheets of paper, the plants appear like prisoners, or like pressed flowers in a personal scrapbook—or perhaps like elements in a playful collage. Whether these species still grow in Okinawa today is uncertain, but they may have survived the war and continued to propagate. A story at the end of the book, featuring a war survivor and a begonia flower, adds yet another layer—turning the entire work into something that feels almost like a quiet act of prayer.
OKINAWA!! by Victoire Thierrée (RVB Books, 2025)
Thierrée’s work shares with Tomatsu a desire to confront the political dimensions of Okinawa and to document its ongoing realities. However, where Tomatsu’s approach was rooted in the human and cultural aspects of the “on-site” experience, Thierrée’s lens shifts toward the larger-scale subjects of “bases” and “nature.” She positions herself slightly apart—embracing her outsider’s perspective while still attempting to see deeply into the land.
Both artists conducted “research,” but their approaches differ: the former might be described as journalistic, the latter more investigative in a broader, conceptual sense. By viewing their work side by side, we come to understand the specific perspectives each artist brings—and that neither is more “correct” than the other.
Two "Okinawa" book from different eras
One is a historically significant milestone in photographic history; the other, a contemporary and ambitious attempt to engage in a quiet dialogue between past and present, between record and nature, and between occupation and reclamation.
We invite you to experience these two works together, in conversation.
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