A few weeks ago, &ASIAN headed to Japan House London to witness the photographic works of two of Japan’s most talented. The visitors were captivated by the beauty and profundity of what was on display. Inclined to hear more, we sat down with Iwane Ai for an exclusive tell-all about her works, journey, and intentions behind the art.

Iwane is both a remarkable photographer and person, deriving inspiration from history, both cultural and personal, and weaving it all together in elegance. What could have been a simple, standalone series of work instead possesses a through-line that can be both seen visually and understood meaningfully. From the rich history and thoughts behind her series KĪPUKA to the vivid cherry blossoms in A New River, Iwane reveals all in this deep dive. 

You’ve previously taken part in the annual Kyotographie festival in Japan. How does KĪPUKA differ from your other presentations, in atmosphere and architectural layout of the exhibition?

This is the third exhibition I have worked with KYOTOGRAPHIE, following our collaborations in 2022 and at Les Rencontres d’Arles in 2024. One of the things I value most about working with KYOTOGRAPHIE is the opportunity to conceive an exhibition together with a scenographer from the very beginning.  process that is still relatively uncommon in Japan.

Lucille, Yusuke, Konishi-san, and the entire team are deeply committed to finding the most meaningful way to translate an artist’s vision into space. Working with them is always a genuinely collaborative and rewarding experience. Although KĪPUKA has been shown many times in Japan and Hawai’i, Japan House London gave me the opportunity to realise something I had imagined for years: presenting the work in the dark, where visitors move through the space almost as if wandering cave-like environment.

When was the first time you felt compelled to photographically document the history and long-lasting community of Fukushima?

It was the summer of 2011, when I attended the Bon Dance on Maui and saw people from Fukushima dancing to Fukushima Ondo. They had been invited by the Maui community, which had raised over ¥10 million for earthquake and tsunami relief only a few months after the disaster.

Among them were teenagers evacuated from Futaba, home to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. At first, they watched quietly from the side, but when Maui Taiko began playing Fukushima Ondo, they suddenly leapt up and began to dance.

Their movements embodied a Bon song that had travelled from Fukushima to Hawai’i more than a century earlier. From then on, I began thinking about how I could visualise this story through photography.

What did you feel while capturing the Bon Dance in Hawaii?

In Japan, Bon Dance is often experienced as a summer festival. In Hawai’i, however, it has been carefully preserved as a Buddhist ritual to honour ancestors and the deceased, and it continues to be performed alongside Buddhist ceremonies. Watching dancers move in complete unison, I felt the depth of that collective memory and spiritual continuity. Their movements are remarkably unified, and a shared act of remembrance.

What is the symbolism, or purpose, of the Oni in the forest in A New River?

The oni in A New River was inspired by a conversation with Hisakatsu Yokoyama, a taiko drummer from Futaba, whose music appears in the documentary film Bon-Uta, A Song from Home. He once described the unsettling rhythm at the beginning of his composition “Sakura” as “the footsteps of an oni crawling through an abandoned cherry blossom forest.” To him, the oni represented radiation. In Japanese culture, an oni is not simply a figure of evil. I think of it as a being that exists at the threshold between humans and nature. Yokoyama’s words suggested not only the tragedy of Fukushima, but also a profound respect for forces that remain beyond human control.

That idea was further shaped by Hiroshi Hashimoto, a traditional mask maker and dancer in Fukushima. He told me that by wearing the masks of deity associated with nature, like oni, he lets go of his individual self and becomes part of the landscape through movement.

Soon afterward, the pandemic emptied parks and cherry blossom sites across Japan. Suddenly, abandoned forests were no longer unique to Fukushima. I travelled north, photographing ritual dancers connected to local traditions and searching for a visual language that could speak about a world suspended by forces beyond human control.

The colours on the cherry blossom trees in A New River are vivid and dreamlike, almost as if they were shot in infrared.

How did you compose these images technical-wise, and what were your reasons for making such choices for these images: the colours, motion blur/slow shutter speed on the moving branches, and their overall otherworldly feel?

Many of the photographs were taken at some of the most celebrated cherry blossom sites in north-eastern Japan. In any other year, these places would have been filled with people gathering beneath illuminated trees for hanami. But in the spring of 2020, they were silent and completely dark. To photograph them, I worked with a small team, sometimes as many as seven people, each carrying strobes or continuous lights by hand. As we moved beneath the trees, we experimented with light, movement, and timing in real time. The bluish tones were created by applying coloured gels to the strobes. Using these technical attempts, I sought to convey the distinctive atmosphere of that extraordinary spring. 

Your photography captures movement in a stunning manner.

Moments don’t feel stilled by the medium of a single-frame image; instead, through Iwane Ai’s works, we feel mesmerised and immersed in the stories within. Which of your photos, or photo series, do you think captures the most profound story?

I’m not sure I can answer which story is the most profound. What I do believe is that every photograph inevitably reveals something about the person who made it. Beyond the subject itself, it reflects the photographer’s way of being in the world. If my photographs draw viewers into the stories they depict, I hope it is because they are rooted in time that I have genuinely lived.

Do you have any planned ventures or new photo series in the works?

After the devastating wildfires on Maui in 2023, the town of Lahaina was almost completely destroyed. Many people who had supported my work for years, including Rev. Gensho Hara and his family at Lahaina Jodo Mission, as well as many close friends, lost their homes. The building that housed Nagamine Photo Studio, founded by Harold and Helen Nagamine, who own the panoramic camera I continue to use, was also destroyed in the fire. Lahaina Jodo Mission holds a special place for me. In 2014, it hosted a concert by fifty taiko drummers from Fukushima, which became an important part of the story behind KĪPUKA.

When I published the KĪPUKA photobook in 2018, I felt that I had brought the series to a conclusion. However, these events led me to continue photographing Lahaina using the Nagamine family’s panoramic camera. I am also continuing to document the changing conditions of Fukushima’s restricted zones.

At the same time, I am developing a new body of work centred on rivers in Northern California, where I spent my high school years, and in Aomori, Japan, particularly the Mattole River and the Niida River, located on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean.

I usually work on several long-term projects simultaneously, spending many years moving between different places and developing each project through those encounters.

ARMS is the only one out of three photo series on your website that you didn’t present at your most recent exhibition at Japan House London.

Can you tell us more about the ideas behind this series?

I began ARMS around the same time that I started creating KĪPUKA. One winter, I visited South Point on Hawai’i Island after several days of heavy rain. For a single day, sunlight broke through the clouds, and the newly emerging grasses glowed a vivid fluorescent green beneath the powerful trade winds. It was then that I realised that Hawai’i’s season of new growth arrives in winter.

Later, I encountered the same luminous green in Tokyo during spring, appearing at the tips of newly emerging leaves. I found that it appeared after rain, beneath the direct light of midday.

Those fresh shoots felt strangely alive, as though countless small arms were reaching towards me. I experienced a similar sensation years earlier when I encountered the moss-covered gravestones of first-generation Japanese immigrants on an abandoned sugar plantation in Hawai’i. The inscriptions had almost disappeared, yet the stones seemed to possess a quiet human presence.

Although one represented new life and the other remembrance, I felt the same gesture in both. They seemed to reach towards me with equal force. In ARMS, I juxtaposed these images to explore unexpected connections between distant places. Looking back, it may have been my first attempt to express such relationships through the sequencing of photographs.

If you had an infinite measure of time to make use of the Kodak Cirkut Panorama camera, what else would you love to capture in 360 degrees?

If the spring-driven mechanism could run forever, I would photograph the same place over multiple complete rotations. I would like to see what appears beyond a single 360-degree circle, although I have no idea how such a long strip of film could be developed.

Of all the photos you took of your sister, whether taken on a whim or thoughtfully designed, which do you feel truly displays her soul the best?

I’m about to publish a photobook that includes this series, and while preparing it. I looked through every photograph I’d ever made of her. Each image reveals a different aspect of who she is. I cannot choose a single image to represent her. Looking back through all the photographs, I realized that each reveals a different aspect of who she is. I cannot choose a single image to represent her.

Could you pick a photo series of yours to give a particular spotlight to today, and tell us why?

KĪPUKA was the first body of work I created as an artist, and in many ways it marked the beginning of my career. In Hawaiian, kīpuka refers to an island of vegetation that survives after a lava flow. From these remaining pockets of life, new seeds spread across the black lava field, allowing a forest to return. The word represents a new beginning emerging from what has endured.

Before encountering this concept, I had only thought about time within the scale of my own life. I believed that photography was about recording what existed in front of me. Through the lives of Japanese immigrants in Hawai’i, I came to understand this idea differently. The encounters and inspirations that followed from that experience led naturally to later works such as A New River and My Cherry.

As someone as multinational as yourself, with personal history and works spanning different locations and cultures, how does it feel to have your work presented and admired globally?

One of the greatest rewards of making photographs is that the work continues to travel long after it is made. Exhibiting in London, Paris, and Arles has given me opportunities not only to present my work, but also to encounter different ways of seeing it. Each place brings conversations that I could never have anticipated, and those exchanges often become part of the next project.

I believe that people shaped by different histories and cultures do not have to overcome their differences. Those differences themselves can become a source of generosity, allowing us to offer one another perspectives we would never arrive at alone.

Iwane Ai is on Instagram. You can view her series “KĪPUKA” and “A New River” right now at Japan House London.