The News
Oct. 30, 2009
The peeling plaster, crumbling balconies and shattered windowpanes make the city look like an apocalyptic war zone. Piles of splintered two-by-fours scatter around sagging shells of apartment buildings as the destitute stillness eliminating any signs of life.
Yet the deteriorated remains, those that hint at a nuclear blast, are little more than the product of neglect, the result of a Japanese mining town that went from populous to desolate in a matter of months.
Exclusive images from the island's barren grounds are on display in Mexico City as part of a comprehensive project by StilL, a local photography collective that includes artists Guillaume Corpart Muller, Jan Smith and Ragnar Chacin.
The exhibit, titled "Fantasmas de GunkanjimO ("Ghosts of GunkanjimO) will remain at the Japanese Embassy's cultural annex in Colonia CuauhtAcmoc through Friday, Nov. 6.
"This is the last photo documentary that there is ever going to be on Gunkanjima," Corpart said at the exhibit's Oct. 21 inauguration.
Gunkanjima is a tiny island measuring just one square kilometer and situated off the coast of Nagasaki. In 1886, the Mitsubishi Corporation opened a coal mine there, and the population began to boom in 1916 when the company built housing complexes for its workers.
Over the decades, hundreds of coalminers and their families flocked to Gunkanjima. Schools, stores and clinics popped up as the island-city expanded. By the 1970s, however, petroleum had surfaced as a far more lucrative alternative to coal.
Before Mitsubishi closed the mine in 1974, the island's population had reached a staggering 83,500 people per square kilometer - the highest population density ever recorded.
(Mexico City, by comparison, logged around 8,400 people per square kilometer in 2007).
After the mine closed, literally every inhabitant left the island, with most heading to Nagasaki to search for work.
Last November, nearly 35 years after the mine closed, Corpart and Smith took a small boat to Gunkanjima to close the final chapter on a series of abandonment-themed photographs, a venture that took the duo to cities in Africa, Puerto Rico and Mexico.
Although the island at the time was technically closed and heavily guarded by coastal patrols, Corpart and Smith managed three trips lasting five hours each. They incessantly snapped images of the all that was left behind.
However, since the island has become an UNESCO World Heritage site, no one has been allowed back on Gunkanjima. With a platoon in place to protect the grounds, Corpart and Smith's pictures could very well be the last to emerge from the shell of a civilization.
Back in the Mexico City gallery, 24 of the collection's 60 images hang on the walls, mostly alternating between the two artists' works.
"I tried to capture how people lived, and I really tried to bring back the human elements that tie us back to a time of prosperity," Copart said.
A black-and-white photograph titled "No. 44" shows a polished pair of a girl's white ballet shoes, the toes pointing to a coal-covered balcony and resting on a cracked tile floor.
His image "No. 27" pictures an enormous heap of glass bottles piled up to the ceiling and spilling down to the floor, surrounding a metal-frame cot in what looks like a medical clinic.
Smith's work, on the other hand, is less about the life that remains and more about the ghosts of what once was.
In a photograph titled "Patience," the blurred silhouette of a nude woman accents the crumbling window frame on which she poses. The image "Au revoir HashimO shows rust-stained concrete walls, cracked glass and scattered debris with the sweeping shadows of the model in movement.
The Gunkanjima exhibit coincides with the StilL's mission to promote art photography, Corpart said.
"We're bringing evermore attention to photography as conveying emotions, feelings structures, ideas and messages," he said.
For more details, visit www.still-photo.blogspot.com
The peeling plaster, crumbling balconies and shattered windowpanes make the city look like an apocalyptic war zone. Piles of splintered two-by-fours scatter around sagging shells of apartment buildings as the destitute stillness eliminating any signs of life.
Yet the deteriorated remains, those that hint at a nuclear blast, are little more than the product of neglect, the result of a Japanese mining town that went from populous to desolate in a matter of months.
Exclusive images from the island's barren grounds are on display in Mexico City as part of a comprehensive project by StilL, a local photography collective that includes artists Guillaume Corpart Muller, Jan Smith and Ragnar Chacin.
The exhibit, titled "Fantasmas de GunkanjimO ("Ghosts of GunkanjimO) will remain at the Japanese Embassy's cultural annex in Colonia CuauhtAcmoc through Friday, Nov. 6.
"This is the last photo documentary that there is ever going to be on Gunkanjima," Corpart said at the exhibit's Oct. 21 inauguration.
Gunkanjima is a tiny island measuring just one square kilometer and situated off the coast of Nagasaki. In 1886, the Mitsubishi Corporation opened a coal mine there, and the population began to boom in 1916 when the company built housing complexes for its workers.
Over the decades, hundreds of coalminers and their families flocked to Gunkanjima. Schools, stores and clinics popped up as the island-city expanded. By the 1970s, however, petroleum had surfaced as a far more lucrative alternative to coal.
Before Mitsubishi closed the mine in 1974, the island's population had reached a staggering 83,500 people per square kilometer - the highest population density ever recorded.
(Mexico City, by comparison, logged around 8,400 people per square kilometer in 2007).
After the mine closed, literally every inhabitant left the island, with most heading to Nagasaki to search for work.
Last November, nearly 35 years after the mine closed, Corpart and Smith took a small boat to Gunkanjima to close the final chapter on a series of abandonment-themed photographs, a venture that took the duo to cities in Africa, Puerto Rico and Mexico.
Although the island at the time was technically closed and heavily guarded by coastal patrols, Corpart and Smith managed three trips lasting five hours each. They incessantly snapped images of the all that was left behind.
However, since the island has become an UNESCO World Heritage site, no one has been allowed back on Gunkanjima. With a platoon in place to protect the grounds, Corpart and Smith's pictures could very well be the last to emerge from the shell of a civilization.
Back in the Mexico City gallery, 24 of the collection's 60 images hang on the walls, mostly alternating between the two artists' works.
"I tried to capture how people lived, and I really tried to bring back the human elements that tie us back to a time of prosperity," Copart said.
A black-and-white photograph titled "No. 44" shows a polished pair of a girl's white ballet shoes, the toes pointing to a coal-covered balcony and resting on a cracked tile floor.
His image "No. 27" pictures an enormous heap of glass bottles piled up to the ceiling and spilling down to the floor, surrounding a metal-frame cot in what looks like a medical clinic.
Smith's work, on the other hand, is less about the life that remains and more about the ghosts of what once was.
In a photograph titled "Patience," the blurred silhouette of a nude woman accents the crumbling window frame on which she poses. The image "Au revoir HashimO shows rust-stained concrete walls, cracked glass and scattered debris with the sweeping shadows of the model in movement.
The Gunkanjima exhibit coincides with the StilL's mission to promote art photography, Corpart said.
"We're bringing evermore attention to photography as conveying emotions, feelings structures, ideas and messages," he said.
For more details, visit www.still-photo.blogspot.com
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