Photographer. Born in Iwate, northern Japan.
Since 1998, I have worked on My Fathers 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, I continue to explore the history and background of the lifestyle and land long shared throughout the Tohoku region, northern part of Japan.
My photographs and essays highlight the changes to the rich life and culture of the north in the face of modernization and natural disasters. My body of work includes 'Seaside Town', a work in which I repeatedly visited Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, to experience the local culture, talk to residents, and photograph the area following the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011; and Northern Lights, in which I 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.
My works are in the collections of Musée Adrien Mentienne (France), Musée Gatien-Bonnet (France), and the Iwate Museum of Art (Japan), Rias Ark Museum of Art (Japan), among others.
In recent years, as a member of 'Artistic Team LAAVU' (consisting of myself and Finnish visual artist Antti Ylönen and writer Kaisa Kerätär), I have also been participating in an art project that creates and exhibits works based on regional studies conducted in Tohoku, Japan and Finland.
Naoko Chiba
Last update : 23 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.
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.