Requiem For Pianos

• Prize
  Gold in Portfolio/Personal
• Photographer
  Romain Thiery
• Photo Date
  2025

This journey across Japan aimed to locate and document abandoned pianos. It led me into numerous deserted schools, poignant remnants of a declining rural Japan. In these time-frozen places, pianos wait in moving silence, once witnesses to children’s first hesitant notes. As the population ages and people migrate to large cities, many countryside schools are closing, leaving behind these orphaned instruments. Sometimes perfectly preserved, these pianos embody a fading collective memory. They speak of absence, of cultural transition, and of the silent erosion of a once-vibrant rural identity.