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Hokkaido - An Elemental Landscape
The moment you arrive in Hokkaido the rest of the world seems a long way away. Maybe it is the silence or the lack of people, but shrouded in snow, its simplicity is like nothing else you will encounter. The landscape constantly offers clues and traces of human life are everywhere.
"The very notion of simplicity entices the photographer into thinking the practice of photographing Hokkaido is simple in itself. A blank canvas can pose as many challenges as a woodland scene."
Hokkaido is not a natural landscape at all. It is actively farmed throughout the summer months and the echos of this activity reveal themselves ever so subtly from beneath a veil of winter snow. The work in this book was brought together by Paul Gallagher and Michael Pilkington over several years of exploring this island in the depths of the winter in sub-zero temperatures.
This book contains sixty photographs from Paul and Michael’s journeys through this enchanting island of Japan. You will experience the gently rolling landscapes in the bitter blizzards, the starkness of the bare trees laden with snow, and the ghostly remnants of man made structures, left abandoned by their owners for the winter months. The images show a very different landscape made minimal by farming and even more sparse by the arrival of the hard winter.
"Hokkaido is a suggestive landscape rather than descriptive. Its seduction in winter will never leave the photographer that visits this beautiful place"
The photographs are not attempting to show you the landscape as you would see it, but to reveal to you its inner essence and character and invite you to participate in the experiences of the photographers, forging familiarity and association.
