In Kimura’s exhibition two series will be exhibited:
Correspondence
This fictional story is set in Torres Vedras, Portugal, a region known for its archaeology and once submerged beneath the ocean. Kimura spent a month exploring the ‘First Line of Fortifications’—hilltop defenses built during the Napoleonic Wars along the Sizandro River. Originating in Sapataria and flowing to the Atlantic, the river winds past fortresses that speak to the area’s military past.
While walking these historic paths, Kimura reflected on how the landscape and human life have evolved over 200 years. We cannot return to the past, but by studying the terrain and collecting modern objects discarded on the ground, we can imagine how today’s remnants might become tomorrow’s artifacts.
As a Japanese visitor, Kimura questioned his role in this unfamiliar place. Inspired by archaeology, he hypothesised that, like the past, future excavations might uncover traces of our present. He used a small printer to print his photos on-site and then submerged them in the Sizandro River and the Atlantic, symbolically returning these images to the elements—linking memory, land, and time.
From this series a book has been published in 2022 by IBASHO & the(M) éditions, with photos documenting abandoned objects, flora, and fauna, paired with their coordinates and timestamps to evoke excavation. Made with recycled paper, it includes letters from the present to the past or future, exploring the theme of time and how discarded items may one day reveal our history.
Matagi
This serie offers a poetic and urgent portrait of the Matagi—Japan’s traditional mountain hunters in the northern area of Tohoku—whose cultural identity now stands on the brink of extinction.
Kimura not only accompanied a group of Matagi through remote, snow-covered terrain in search of black bears, he also visualised the way of life of this indigenous tribe. The Matagi, once self-sufficient men of the mountains, have lived with deep respect for the land and its animals. Until the 1960s, they survived without reliance on money, maintaining practices rooted in centuries-old animism and ecological knowledge. But with Japan’s rapid economic growth in the 1970s, many left the forests for modern city life. Today, the Matagi exist on the margins, their customs and stories at risk of vanishing.
Through Kimura’s photographs this series reconstructs the fading world of the Matagi—not as folklore, but as living memory.
The exhibition will run from 6 September - 9 November 2025. The vernissage will be on Saturday 6 September from 14:00 - 18:00, in the presence of the artist.
