HESHIKI Kenshichi: Lungs of a Goat

The Third Gallery Aya’s first exhibition of 2024 will be Lungs of a Goat, a solo show of the photography of Heshiki Kenshichi. We are pleased to present his works including People on the Beach, Working Women, and Doll, which were featured in the photo book Lungs of a Goat: Okinawa 1968–2005, published in 2007.
Heshiki was born in 1948 in the village of Nakijin, Okinawa, and first encountered photography after enrolling at Okinawa Technical High School. Later, he entered the Department of Engineering at Tokyo Photography University (now Tokyo Polytechnic University), but unable to learn due to the campus unrest of the time, he transferred to Tokyo College of Photography. That college also went into a period of lockdown, during which he photographed the islands of Okinawa. In 1985, he co-founded the photography magazine Bifu with Kano Tatsuhiko and Ishikawa Mao. He self-published several photo books, and his 40-year culminated in the publication of his photo collection Lungs of a Goat: Okinawa 1968–2005.

At the beginning of the book is a quote from Heshiki:

“A frog in a well gazes at the sky. The sky is connected to the entire world. Pass through the sky, and you can reach the universe. It was encouragement from my high school teacher that led me to photograph Okinawa. People often say that all of Okinawa is on a military base, but I would like to think it is the bases that are on Okinawa. The photographs in this book capture this archipelago, with approximately 47 inhabited islands, around the time of its so-called ‘reversion to Japan.’ It is my hope that through this collection of photographs, viewers will be gain a sense of Okinawa’s history, its identity, and the soul of its people.”

We invite you to reflect on these sentiments as you view the photos. A complete set of the photography magazine Bifu, rarely viewable all at once, will also be on view.