honorable mention
Jun Ishikura japan
title
Eesti Sepad(Estonian Blacksmiths)
The iron has greatly contributed to development of mankind, and the culture of iron supported a base of the history and the culture.
After the Industrial Revolution, various works have been mechanized and automated, and the conventional works of people will decrease by evolution of the AI anytime soon.
And now the blacksmith that supported the culture of iron has decreased year by year.
Meanwhile, this project chases how cultures and an occupations survive through an Estonian blacksmith in a society.
Since I stepped into an Estonian blacksmith workshop in 2012, I started to take photograph of blacksmith. At first, I just took photos of them because of their intriguing style and their way of life. Their workshops were simply beautiful.
However, after visiting Estonia a couple of times, I noticed how there were many blacksmiths in the country in ratio to their population.
Some points that I felt are the following things.
At first beside the some studios, we can learn blacksmithing in four schools in Estonia. This country has only 1.3 million people. In addition, this country has a wealth of historic site and there are many things made with iron in architecture. And blacksmiths use old machines and work by the manual labor because of a large-scale machine to mass-produce is unprofitable.
They have education, an environment to get closed to the culture and because of small population they keep blacksmith culture.
I am glad to see the social change by the technical evolution to have a good living environment. However, if we lose splendid things based on tradition, it is dreary.
I keep observing this culture and expressing it with photographs.
He captures a variety of scenes through his camera lens
– mostly everyday people and their culture.
He researches the subjects to understand their background
and history when he takes their photographs.
back to gallery
entry description
Blacksmith is an occupation to make tools, parts of building, artworks and so on by forging metal especially iron.The iron has greatly contributed to development of mankind, and the culture of iron supported a base of the history and the culture.
After the Industrial Revolution, various works have been mechanized and automated, and the conventional works of people will decrease by evolution of the AI anytime soon.
And now the blacksmith that supported the culture of iron has decreased year by year.
Meanwhile, this project chases how cultures and an occupations survive through an Estonian blacksmith in a society.
Since I stepped into an Estonian blacksmith workshop in 2012, I started to take photograph of blacksmith. At first, I just took photos of them because of their intriguing style and their way of life. Their workshops were simply beautiful.
However, after visiting Estonia a couple of times, I noticed how there were many blacksmiths in the country in ratio to their population.
Some points that I felt are the following things.
At first beside the some studios, we can learn blacksmithing in four schools in Estonia. This country has only 1.3 million people. In addition, this country has a wealth of historic site and there are many things made with iron in architecture. And blacksmiths use old machines and work by the manual labor because of a large-scale machine to mass-produce is unprofitable.
They have education, an environment to get closed to the culture and because of small population they keep blacksmith culture.
I am glad to see the social change by the technical evolution to have a good living environment. However, if we lose splendid things based on tradition, it is dreary.
I keep observing this culture and expressing it with photographs.
about the photographer
Jun Ishikura is a photographer based in Japan.He captures a variety of scenes through his camera lens
– mostly everyday people and their culture.
He researches the subjects to understand their background
and history when he takes their photographs.
back to gallery