Roots, Roost

• Prize
  Silver in Analog / Film/Fine Art
• Photographer
  Calvin Kenjiro Grover
• Technical Info
  Pentax Zoom 90, Ilford Delta 100, Ilford Hp5+, Fuji Neopan Acros Ii
• Photo Date
  07/13/2025

Masahisa Fukase was born in Bifuka, a small town in rural northern Hokkaido. At eighteen he left home and moved to Tokyo to pursue art photography. Yet much as the ravens he photographed flock to their homes in the trees at dusk, in his darkest hours Fukase returned to the places where his roots ran deepest - the river valleys and rugged landscapes of the place where he was raised. At a moment of crisis over my split Japanese identity, I chose to follow the route Fukase took at the beginning of his Ravens project, responding to new landscapes not dissimilar to my hometown in rural Maine.