Summer Sea 夏の海

KUMAZAWA Maroni 熊沢麿二

The location for this shot is Murotsu, a port area in Tatsuno, Hyogo Prefecture. This photograph was also shot with a Verito soft focus lens. An important port on the coast of Japan’s Inland Sea, the location was long famous as Japan’s first brothel district and for the Noh play Murogimi (Courtesans). KUMAZAWA visited the town to photograph, “the exhaustion apparent in the deterioration of the already aging and decaying town.” But it was the innocent joy of the naked children playing on the sunlit stones, the exact opposite of what he expected, that caught his attention.

Collection of: Tokyo Photographic Art Museum
Title: Summer Sea
Original title: Summer Sea
Artist Name: KUMAZAWA Maroni
Year: 1924
Material / Technique: Gelatin silver print on developing-out paper
Dimensions: 272x178mm
Accession number: 10105437
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum “Search the Collection”: https://collection.topmuseum.jp/Publish/detailPage/30296/