青幻舎 SEIGENSHA Art Publishing

This latest collection by Fukushima Atsushi follows on the success of I Deliver Bento Boxes to the Houses of Old People Living Alone (2021), which brought together a decade’s worth of photographs of the clients of the senior-citizen meal-delivery service at which he worked part-time. In 2018, after leaving that job, Fukushima took up farming at the invitation of an acquaintance. His expectations of peaceful toil amid pastoral surroundings, however, quickly gave way to shock over the grueling realities of agriculture; working under the scorching summertime sun was especially punishing, with him racing against time to harvest his hard-grown vegetables while fending off the ravages of pests, infestation, rampant weeds, and rough weather. He pitched himself body and soul into this battle, as just one among the many creatures living within the grip of nature, until eventually he began to see in his primal struggle the utopia he had been searching for all along. The book is his record of those seven years.

Shot entirely in the summer outdoors, the images unleash themselves across the pages with dazzling shine, power, and energy, as if in answer to the vigor of the earth and the elements and the unbridled verve of Fukushima himself.

Fukushima Atsushi, born in 1981 in Kanagawa Prefecture, first came to note for his participation in the 2020 Kyotographie International Photography Festival with a series that was published by Seigensha as I Deliver Bento Boxes to the Houses of Old People Living Alone in the following year. From 2018 he turned to farming, capturing the harsh summer harvesting season in photographs exploring the relationship between humans and nature; the resulting series, Under the Burning Sun (the basis for this book), won him a spot at Kyotographie again in 2026. Today he continues to pursue photographic projects that affirm his belief in the power and beauty of life.