This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Suda Issei, Nagi no Hira—Fragments of Calm, organised by the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. In his best-known series, Fushi Kaden (1976), Issei Suda captured the extraordinary within the ordinary. His photographs of familiar landscapes, everyday festivals and customs received high praise. In Japan and abroad, he is recognised among photographers whose intensely subjective work also offers a fresh ethnological perspective on conventional images of Japan and Tokyo.
 
“When I think of the body of photographic work he created over more than fifty years, and the immense number of images preserved as negatives, the phrase nagi no hira—fragments of calm—comes to mind. The Japanese word nagi, translated as calm, refers specifically to those moments in the morning or evening when the wind suddenly drops and time seems to stand still. It is this moment that he captures in his photographs. The still, humid air shares something with the rich sense of time and space contained in Suda's pictures; above all, the term offers a clue to understanding his photographic expression.”
 
Adapted from Harumi Niwa, “Nagi no Hira—From the Ordinary to Another World”.