Fiona Amundsen, Rachel Boillot : from shore to sea

Edited by Heisue Chung and Vivian Sming, from shore to sea focuses on photography’s relationship with the very human attempts to understand, explore, discover, and uncover. The photographic works presented in this series use methodologies and approaches particular to the fields of anthropology and social sciences. from shore to sea hopes to generate discussions about photography’s role in fieldwork and research, from its historical relationship with the colonialist beginnings of anthropology to the medium’s perpetual ability to exist as both artifact and artifice.
For the issue #1, Fiona Amundsen’s photographic project, The Imperial Body takes the contentious shrine and Yushukan military museum as its point of focus by presenting a series of photographs of the present-day shrine, surrounding gardens, memorials, and museum artefacts, with fragments of historical images that represent moments of worship and acts of nationalism associated with WWII. By working with existing images, along with material produced during her residency in Tokyo, The Imperial Body attempts to critically explore the complexities of archives linking to essentially traumatic and nationalist histories. This project aims to work with ideas of nationalism that are linked to the historical, ideological and political conflict of WWII, along with their representations, both as narrative and image.
In 2011, the U.S. Postal Service announced 3,653 rural post offices would close. A disproportionate number of the condemned are located in the South. Several thousand locations have since been added to this list of erasure as the Postal Service struggles to cement its foothold in an increasingly digitized world. The fate of the rural post office remains unclear. Rachel Boillot’s project, Post Script explores the post offices that serve as town center in rural communities. Often acting as a town’s sole address, this location embodies the numerical identity of place. Without its presence in the landscape, a ZIP code is lost. Yet residents remain anchored in place. In spite of post office departure or a vanished code, the home stands. Attachment to land lingers, rooted deeper than digits.