With all the current problems facing Japan¡¯s rural communities, ¡°Salt of the Earth¡± at the Tokyo Gallery is a visual contribution to an ongoing debate on their value and survival. The rhetoric of the show espouses the humble virtues of life in Amami, a group of islands between Kagoshima and Okinawa, though the sum total of the images, whose content is heavily filtered by stylistic devices, does not match the appeal of a gentler way of life.
The influence of Robert Frank and Daido Moriyama are clear to see in the New York-based Yuichi Hibi¡¯s black-and-white street photography, and in the focus on ¡°culture¡± being different ways of life, not the just the recreational activity of an educated elite.
Frank¡¯s Beat Generation publication ¡°The Americans¡± and Moriyama¡¯s 1976 ¡°Tales of Tono¡± are antecedents in this respect, and Hibi¡¯s grainy, heavy ¡°Dutch angle¡± photography covers aesthetic territory already well-traveled, even accounting for the fact that ¡°Salt of the Earth¡± dates back to the early 1990s.
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