Ai Iwane - Light From Fifty Years Ago

$100.00

Light From Fifty Years Ago, 2026

AIR 2019

Inkjet print on paper
8 × 10 Inches

Created during the BEPPU PROJECT residency program, transiton2 (2025–26), this work was produced in Beppu, Kyushu, a city known as Japan's first major postwar tourist destination and home to more than 2,800 hot springs. The hot spring water is said to originate from rain that seeped underground 50 years ago, where it was heated by magma before resurfacing. Iwane borrowed a 1970s camera from a now-closed photo studio and photographed Beppu's tourist sites on Neopan SS film manufactured in 1975. The resulting images reveal light that slowly penetrated the film's black paper backing over the course of fifty years.

This print is available only from September 17th - December 7th, 2026. After this date, this image will not be made available in this format again.

Light From Fifty Years Ago, 2026

AIR 2019

Inkjet print on paper
8 × 10 Inches

Created during the BEPPU PROJECT residency program, transiton2 (2025–26), this work was produced in Beppu, Kyushu, a city known as Japan's first major postwar tourist destination and home to more than 2,800 hot springs. The hot spring water is said to originate from rain that seeped underground 50 years ago, where it was heated by magma before resurfacing. Iwane borrowed a 1970s camera from a now-closed photo studio and photographed Beppu's tourist sites on Neopan SS film manufactured in 1975. The resulting images reveal light that slowly penetrated the film's black paper backing over the course of fifty years.

This print is available only from September 17th - December 7th, 2026. After this date, this image will not be made available in this format again.

AI IWANE

Ai Iwane began her career as a photographer in 1996. In 2006, she started work on the series KIPUKA, which explores Japanese immigrants in Hawaii and their relationship with Fukushima in Japan’s northeastern Tōhoku region. Her work continued in Tōhoku in 2020 with A NEW RIVER, a complex study of overcoming grief. In this series, she captured cherry trees in bloom, with no one to view them, at a time when communities around the world were forced into isolation.
Her work has been shown at the Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles 2024, the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, KYOTOGRAPHIE 2022, etc.

Thoughts on the lab

I was able to work with the most professional and experienced instructor for printing I ever worked with. I learned many techniques I never knew from Adam and Alex.