Yukimitsu NAGAHATA

"Portrait of a Danchi"

Pages: 64 / photos: 60
Size: 200x264x8mm / hardcover
Price: 2,800JPY
Release Date: September 2011

The Japanese "danchi", or suburban public housing projects, that Japan built in great numbers during the 50's, 60's and 70's, have in the last few years been the subject of more than a few fetishistic, vaguely typological photographic explorations, often by a hipster-inflected younger generation and with seemingly little care for those who call such complexes their home.
How unsurprising then that the photographer of this "Danchi Portrait", Yukimitsu Nagahata, is in his mid-70s, or that the subjects of his work are the housing project residents, rather than the well-worn (both as place, and as fetish object) danchi themselves.
Nagahata, who only took up photography 11 years ago, shot these portraits at Takenedai Danchi, located in Funabashi, Chiba prefecture. Although his afterword (Japanese only) does not explicitly say so, we can assume from the ease with which his subjects carry themselves that Nagahata is among the over 12,000 people who call Takanedai home.

(Quotation from japan exposures )