KAKERA Masaru Tatsuki

After gaining attention for his photographs of Dekotora (decorated trucks), Masaru Tatsuki turned his lens in 2006 toward the Tohoku region, immersing himself in its landscapes, cultures, and people, whose lives remain deeply intertwined with Shamanistic roots dating back to the Jomon period. Having published acclaimed works such as TOHOKU and GYOJIN, Tatsuki now confronts a new subject in his latest work: the fragments (kakera) of Jomon pottery.

Beginning in Tsunan Town, Niigata Prefecture, Tatsuki gained access to vast archives stored in museum vaults and excavation sites across Japan. He photographed these ancient earthenware shards exactly as they were kept—resting on the decades-old newspapers originally used as lining and cushioning inside their storage boxes.

The thousand-year-old Jomon pottery, the newspaper from the day it was unearthed, and the modern moment captured by Tatsuki’s shutter. Within a single photograph, multiple layers of time overlap, bringing viewers face-to-face with objects that had been buried and forgotten. His ability to capture history, human traces, and lost time through a dialogue with the "voiceless" and the "unknowable" reflects a perspective that remains consistent throughout his career. Through these images where past, present, and future accumulate, we are compelled to look closer at ourselves and the society that surrounds us.

"The layers of temporal fragments inside those flat boxes reveal that the past, present, and future do not form a seamless continuation; instead, they are warped, twisted, and entangled. We are treading upon just such layers of time." — From the artist's statement by Masaru Tatsuki