Engineered terrain in six collotype sheets
LANDSCAPE gathers six black-and-white photographs by Toshio Shibata, made in Japan between 1989 and 1990 in Niigata, Fukushima, Miyazaki and Tochigi prefectures. The images show concrete retaining walls and erosion-control dams set into mountainous terrain — structures built for engineering purposes, photographed as compositions in which human intervention and landscape form a single visual order.
Published by Benrido in Kyoto as part of its Mini Portfolios series, this open-edition release presents the photographs as collotype prints on Takeo Matt-color HG paper, rather than as reproductions bound into a book. The six sheets remain loose, held within a portfolio case and supplied in a protective bag, allowing each print to be viewed or displayed independently. A Japanese-language leaflet accompanying the set explains the collotype process itself — a nineteenth-century printing technique valued for its continuous tonal range between shadow and highlight.
Benrido is explicit that these collotypes are a distinct printing medium from Shibata's original gelatin-silver prints; the portfolio should be understood on those terms, as a collotype edition rather than a set of original photographic prints.
Shibata, born in Tokyo in 1949, studied oil painting before turning to photography, and has worked consistently with large-format views of dams, retaining walls, and other constructed elements within the landscape. His photographs from this period were included in MoMA's New Photography 8 (1992–93), which holds related images from the same years and regions — context for the practice this portfolio documents, though the institutional prints and this Benrido edition remain separate objects.
More works by the photographer can be found in the Toshio Shibata collection, alongside further Japanese photobooks in the catalogue.
