New Land: Pre-Hokkaido Landscapes
New Land: Pre-Hokkaido Landscapes is a large-format black-and-white photobook by Toshiki Nakanishi, made in the Daisetsuzan mountains of central Hokkaido and published by Case Publishing in 2023.
The photographs do not pursue the scenic. Snowfields, volcanic rock, and low cloud are treated as matter — present, unembellished, and without hierarchy. The images hold a visual register that is matter-of-fact rather than atmospheric: Hokkaido as terrain, not as spectacle. Across 56 black-and-white photographs, the Daisetsuzan range is rendered with the kind of attention that comes from long familiarity rather than encounter.
The book's written layer introduces a dimension of naming. The Ainu name Optateske appears alongside the renaming tied to Meiji-era survey and administrative settlement. The text does not interpret. It states. That restraint is precise: the reader is left to register how a name shapes the reading of land without the book insisting on it.
The physical object is hardcover, 260 × 367 mm — a scale that suits the subject. 104 pages carry 56 images. Text is bilingual: English and Japanese. ISBN 978-4-908526-53-4.
Nakanishi (b. 1971, Osaka) has photographed Hokkaido since 1989. He relocated to Biei, in central Hokkaido, in 2012. New Land is the product of that sustained, decades-long observation — landscape treated as lived territory rather than destination. Further titles are available in the Toshiki Nakanishi collection.
This title is part of the Photobooks catalogue at Lokator100.
