Tokyo-based photographer Gentaro Ishizuka goes beyond a typical capture, instead traversing vast and challenging landscapes to both witness and beautifully immortalise often unseen environments. Shooting with a large-format 8 x 10 inch film camera, his practice is based around polar and remote landscapes, developing series around photographing glaciers, industrial pipelines and remnants of the gold rush.

The award-winning photographer bridges art and documentary, capturing structures and scenes that reveal a new reflective perspective on historical, cultural, societal and environmental themes from around the world: note, Alaska to California and New Zealand. Ishizuka has also forged a close, long-term relationship with prestigious book publisher Gerhard Steidl, with which he is currently with together for his next book.

Ala Champ Editor in Chief Joanna Kawecki caught up with Gentaro to discuss the environmental changes he’s noticed when photographing glaciers, to his upcoming large-scale major solo exhibition with gallerist Kotaro Nukaga in Tokyo.

Joanna Kawecki: What was your earliest memory of photography, or what sparked your interest in photography?

Gentaro Ishizuka: I remember clearly the moment I started photography. When I was about nineteen, after buying my first SLR camera, I began trespassing into restricted areas (in what is now the Harumi district). I wanted to take “good photos.” Late-night scrap yards, underground corridors beneath reclaimed land formed by the tides. I think it was akin to trespassing. And back then, I believed that’s what taking photographs was all about.

Can you tell us about your upbringing. In what ways do you think it influenced you to pursue photography?

My father worked as a salmon wholesaler at the Tsukiji Fish Market. (The fish market relocated to Toyosu several years ago). The Tsukiji market where I was born and raised was a chaotic place, like Calcutta in India. It wasn’t until I was over twenty and backpacking, that I visited Calcutta and truly thought, “This is just like Tsukiji.” Due to my father’s profession, a salmon fishing map was always pinned to his desk. From that map, I’ve drawn inspiration for many works since childhood, starting with Alaska.

You often travel and photograph isolated environments such as Iceland and Alaska, often photographing them alone via a kayak. How do you prepare for these trips? 

I’ve always been bad at having someone guide me or teach me things. I taught myself photography and darkroom work and when it came to sea kayaking in Alaska, I just bought a folding sea kayak and started paddling. That’s all there was to it.

The other day, I traveled through Alaska for the first time with a professional sea kayaking guide. He said my approach to starting these trips was crazy. He said normally, you learn from someone else before venturing deep into nature.

Capturing Gold Rush phenomena in Alaska, California and NZ, what drew you to be interested in these late 19th-century cultural eras? 

First, I empathised with the primitive gamble of the Gold Rush. Modern gold rushes — AI, Bitcoin, and the like — lack substance and are closer to pure intellectual games. In contrast, the actual gold rushes of the late 19th century required throwing your body into nature. Such historical events, which feel like ancient history, are merely about 130 years old. We humans have advanced technology far beyond that era, become completely enclosed within cities and conversely, lost the energy overflowing from our own bodies.

I was born too late. Everyone must feel that way sometimes. I especially felt admiration for the photographers who documented those historical events. I heard photographers back then used glass wet plates. I was drawn to those images and to the fact that relics from that era still litter the mountains of Alaska, New Zealand, and Finland, where the gold rush actually happened. It took ten years to complete the photography, but finding my own work—work no one else had done—brought immense joy.

Capturing Gold Rush phenomena in Alaska, California and NZ, what drew you to be interested in these late 19th-century cultural eras? 

First, I empathised with the primitive gamble of the Gold Rush. Modern gold rushes — AI, Bitcoin, and the like — lack substance and are closer to pure intellectual games. In contrast, the actual gold rushes of the late 19th century required throwing your body into nature. Such historical events, which feel like ancient history, are merely about 130 years old. We humans have advanced technology far beyond that era, become completely enclosed within cities and conversely, lost the energy overflowing from our own bodies.

I was born too late. Everyone must feel that way sometimes. I especially felt admiration for the photographers who documented those historical events. I heard photographers back then used glass wet plates. I was drawn to those images and to the fact that relics from that era still litter the mountains of Alaska, New Zealand, and Finland, where the gold rush actually happened. It took ten years to complete the photography, but finding my own work—work no one else had done—brought immense joy.

You recently visited a glacier that you had previously visited years earlier and noted that it had significantly decreased. You are a first-hand witness to environmental changes through your work. How do you feel about the future of climate change, and how can you communicate the urgency you witness?

This summer, I went to photograph a certain coastal glacier for the first time in nine years. Nine years ago, it was a coastal glacier so formidable I was genuinely afraid to approach it. That coastal glacier, known as Surprise Glacier, had become thin and flimsy — like a mille-feuille pastry — and I felt profound sadness deep in my heart. I decided to record it on video too.

Coastal glaciers in Alaska are rapidly disappearing. As someone who has photographed glaciers for twenty years, this is a particularly sad event. It is not my role to convey, from a scientific perspective, that this much glacier has disappeared and that this much will disappear in the future. Let’s leave that data collection to the glaciology experts at the University of Alaska.

Also, people don’t really want to see the raw data or the cruel reality. I feel I can only convey something through the beauty of “azure.” “Azure” is also a crucial colour in art history too.

Your books are published by Gerhard Steidl. Can you tell us an insight into what it is like working with him?

He’s like a person caught in the eye of a typhoon. When you come into contact with him, that centrifugal force spreads to you, making you feel like you have to do「work」at a furious pace too. That’s the kind of person he is.

What are your upcoming news and projects?

Next year, a major solo exhibition is scheduled at Kotaro Nukaga Tennoz. It will be a large-scale exhibition centred around glaciers. These are photographs of coastal glaciers I’ve collected while sea kayaking. I’m also participating in a three-person exhibition “WORLDING -No Oars, No Shore” at the Pola Museum Ginza Annex, starting from June 12 and on until July 5.

Interview: Joanna Kawecki
Images: Courtesy Gentaro Ishizuka