In 1989, the world was at a turning point.
The Cold War ended, the Gulf War broke out, the Tiananmen Square Massacre occurred, and in Japan, the era of the Emperor Showa came to an end. It was a year during which the demise of the post-war world order became obvious. Then, in 1991, the “bubble” of the Japanese economy burst. While standing right at that pivotal point in history and witnessing all those things happening around me, I launched two separate projects: “Industrial Archaeology” in 1991, and in 1993, the “Fake Scape” series.
“Industrial Archaeology” focuses on production sites of key industries during the period of rapid economic growth, while “Fake Scape,” following two years later, is a portrait of stores with flashy, eccentric designs that were set up along national highways (mainly Route 16) in the suburbs of major cities. I eventually continued to photograph these places until around 2005.
In 2021, I was given an opportunity to present my works in a solo show that I titled “Ouroborous,” juxtaposing both projects in a combined image space at Canon Gallery S (Shinagawa, Tokyo). So there I was, thirty years after commencing work on these series, and I felt that I was finally able to express the thoughts that had been elaborating since the 1990s about the uncertain situation of Japan at the turn of the century, while also thinking that these images are still valid today as documents that reflect the general state of the nation.
Today, in the year 2024, the advance of digital infrastructures is accelerating, the cycle of production and consumption transforms in ways beyond intelligibility by conventional concepts, and it seems as though it still drifts along with the continuously fluid situation. I believe that it is a meaningful practice to examine the status quo by looking back on those days of the 1990s.

– After words by Hiromi Tsuchida