Photographer, Artist. Born in Iwate Prefecture in 1972, lives in Sakata City, Yamagata Prefecture in northern Japan. Completed her master's degree at the Graduate School of Painting and Art Education, Iwate University in 1997, graduated from the Institute of Contemporary Practice Arts in Gunma, Japan in 1999.
Since 1998, she has worked on 'My Father's House', a representative photo series and lifelong labor of love that documents an old house and the surrounding village in a depopulated area of Iwate.
Using early photographic techniques, she continues to explore the history and background of the lifestyle and land long shared throughout the northern part of Japan. Chiba's photographs and essays highlight the changes to the rich life and culture of the north in the face of modernization and natural disasters.
Her body of work includes 'Seaside Town', a work in which she repeatedly visited Minami-soma, Fukushima Prefecture, to experience the local culture, talk to residents, and photograph the area for seven years after the Great East Japan Earthquake and the nuclear power plant accident in 2011; and 'Northern Lights', in which she visited Lapland in Finland in search of traces of regional culture and documented the small village of Mutenia, which was deserted after the construction of a dam in the 1960s.
Major solo exhibitions include 'My Fathers House' (Cyg art gallery, Japan,2023), 'My Fathers House/Northern Lights' (Yorozu Tetsugoro Memorial Museum, Japan,2019), 'Northern Lights' (Gallery KOPIO, Finland,2018).
Major group exhibitions include KDMoP Shonai Photo Meeting -Remix Ken Domon-(Ken Domon Museum of Photography,Japan,2024), Maebashi Media Festival (Japan,2024), Dialogue With Land -Artistic Team LAAVU: Naoko Chiba/Antti Ylönen/Kaisa Kerätär (Kobo Chika,Japan,2023), Spirit of North (Korundi House of Culture, Finland,2019), Fukushima Biennale (Japan,2018), Naoko Chiba & Antti Ylönen Photo Exhibition Silent Stories of Land (Northern Photographic Centre,Finland,2018), Places and Memories (Yamagata Museum of Art,Japan,2016), Ubiquitous Views (Aomori Contemporary Art Centre(ACAC),Japan,2016), Éclats de Photographie (Musée Adrien Mentienne,France,2011), MOT Annual (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo,Japan,2007), VOCA 2006 The Vision of Contemporary Art (The Ueno Royal Museum,Japan,2006).
Naoko Chiba
Last update : 28 Jun. 2025
Works
From the series of 『My Father's House』
《 Boots for the Field, October 2006 》
Cyanotype on Kurotani paper, 2022 ©Naoko Chiba
Since 1998, Naoko Chiba has worked on My Father’s House, a photographic series and lifelong labor of love that documents an old house and the surrounding village in a depopulated area of Iwate. Using early photographic techniques such as cyanotype printing and gelatin silver prints, she continues to explore the history and background of the lifestyle and land long shared throughout the Tohoku region, northern part of Japan.
From the series of 『Seaside Town』
《 Tabunoki trees - Igune, Minamisoma,Fukushima 2016 》
Gelatin silver print, 2021 ©Naoko Chiba
The photographic and video works 'Seaside Town' were produced by Naoko Chiba, a photographer living in northern part of Japan. After the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami, and the nuclear power plant disaster in 2011, she started taking photographs in a seaside village in Minamisoma city, Fukushima Prefecture.
This work 'Seaside Town' depicts the pictures she took the influence on local culture, faiths, and environment that remained there until before the earthquake occurred. Her photos and essays into the video also show about the drastic changes that describe the hearts and minds of the people who presently live along the seaside areas due to the effects of the disasters.
(Excerpt from the essay 'Seaside Town')
It' s been seven years since I had the opportunity
to start taking photographs in a village
in Kashima Ward of Minamisoma, Fukushima,
following the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011.
I stayed with a farming family in one of their guestrooms,
living together with locals and volunteers,
and came to feel like a member of the family.
This is the record of what I saw and the stories of the people I met there.
From the series of 『Northern Lights』
《 Mutenia, 2018 》
Gelatin silver print, 2018 ©Naoko Chiba
Northern Lights, in which Naoko Chiba visited Lapland in Finland in search of traces of regional culture and documented the small village of Mutenia, which was deserted after the construction of a dam in the 1960s.