Gallery: Top Twelve-08

Carpenter
Itoh City, Japan

In the summer of 2003, I went back to Japan to conduct some additional fieldwork among deaf communities. While my day job is as a political and cultural anthropologist, I've been slowly building my portfolio as a visual anthropologist.

This carpenter has been renovating a home in Itoh City, Shizuoka Prefecture. He's planing down cedar panels for the walls. He's one of the few remaining traditional carpenters. Most houses in Japan are built pre-fabricated in factories these days and trucked in.

The theme of this summer portfolio is "work." When we think of work in Japan, we usually imagine factories and legions of faceless workers. This series is of craftsmen or "shokunin" in Japanese. Enjoy a different side of work in Japan than is usually pictured.

From the Japan 2003 series.

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Equipment: Leica M7; Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1.5; Fuji Acros 100