[Photo Report] After the Image | ASAMA INTERNATIONAL PHOTO FESTIVAL 2026 PHOTO MIYOTA

Entrance signboard of ASAMA INTERNATIONAL PHOTO FESTIVAL 2026 PHOTO MIYOTA, with Henriette Sabroe Ebbesen's Growing Up as the key visual — The entrance to MMoP. The key visual is Henriette Sabroe Ebbesen’s Growing Up (2017–). A photograph of a child sticking out a blue tongue has become the signboard itself.

At the southern foot of Mt. Asama lies the town of Miyota, Nagano Prefecture. Ten minutes on foot from Miyota Station on the Shinano Railway, up a gentle slope, stands a complex called MMoP. Across grounds planted with lawn and ornamental grasses, photographs printed at large scale are shown outdoors.
ASAMA INTERNATIONAL PHOTO FESTIVAL 2026 PHOTO MIYOTA; this year’s theme is “After the Image.”

A photograph is not finished at the instant the shutter falls; it keeps changing meaning as it is looked at, shared and remembered. That is the theme this show sets out. And so this photo festival shows photographs on ivy-covered walls, hangs them among the trees and stands them on the lawn, turning them into something exposed to wind, rain and light. Twenty-two artists and groups from Japan and abroad; around three hundred works on view.

Children Lined Up on a Wall of Ivy

The first thing you see on entering is a run of large-format prints hung the full length of an ivy-covered building: Henriette Sabroe Ebbesen‘s Growing Up (2017–), by the Danish photographer and filmmaker. This year’s key visual was taken from this work as well.

Henriette Sabroe Ebbesen's Growing Up installed along the ivy-covered facade of the building — Henriette Sabroe Ebbesen, Growing Up, 2017–. Collages of photographs left in her father’s album and photographs she took herself. The white panel at the far left is the wall text.

Old family photographs from her father’s album, layered as collage with the photographs she is making now. So in front of this wall two spans of time press against each other inside a single frame. A man in a suit surrounded by sunflowers; a screen where lipstick-like mouths repeat in tiles; someone with the face of an animal. Each drifts a little further from whatever the words “family photograph” would lead you to expect.

Henriette Sabroe Ebbesen's Growing Up on the facade, seen across the lawn — Eight works in all, printed large. The green of the ivy seems to be doing the work of a frame.

Henriette Sabroe Ebbesen's Growing Up on the facade, seen head-on — From the front of the building. The photographs have become part of the architecture.

A single piece from Henriette Sabroe Ebbesen's Growing Up: a child sticking out a blue tongue — The piece that became the key visual. This one image is on the entrance signboard and on the roadside sign as well. It enters the field of vision even of people merely driving through the town.

The MMoP grounds in the evening, with works at the end of the facade and the lawn — Close to evening on a Sunday, and it was not especially crowded. Outdoor work looks better once the crowd has thinned.

Human Outlines and the Grain of Fireworks

Entering the exhibition room, a black screen-like structure stands directly ahead: Jörgen Axelvall‘s Most likely the flames will destroy themselves / Looking Up. The artist was born in Sweden and lives in Tokyo.

Jörgen Axelvall's display facing the indoor entrance at MMoP, with Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs's Water Column hanging behind — Jörgen Axelvall, Most likely the flames will destroy themselves / Looking Up. The two works hanging high at the back are Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs’s Water Column.

Human outlines surfacing faintly, and close-ups of the instant a firework’s brilliant burst scatters, stand side by side in the same view. Both are Polaroids blown up large, so that even the film grain and the noise become visible. Against a strong ground running from orange into yellow, a figure cut out in white. Only the outline, so neither face nor clothing can be read.

Another face of Jörgen Axelvall's display, with white figures floating on plinth-like panels — Not hung on a wall but applied to the faces of boxes set on the floor. The way it reads changes with where you stand; there is no front.

The large banners hanging at the back are Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs‘s Water Column, which grew out of a residency at a research facility on the Red Sea. Using underwater cameras, pigment and photograms, they re-photographed existing images with corals and shells placed in front of them. One work scatters pink grain across the whole surface with a black circle opened at its centre; the other is a swirl of gold and green. The roof trusses are left bare, so you have to raise your eyes before the whole thing comes in.

Sky Hung Out to Dry Among the Trees

Round the back of the building, large lengths of fabric hang one after another along a woodland path. This is Jörgen Axelvall again — Looking Up: a series photographing aeroplanes crossing the Tokyo sky, made with the solarisation technique.
The fabric is semi-transparent, so the stand of trees behind shows through; when the wind blows it sways, and the shadows of real branches cross over the photographed sky. Photographs of the Tokyo sky rise up into the sky of Miyota.

Jörgen Axelvall's Looking Up: green, blue and grey lengths of fabric strung along a woodland path — Jörgen Axelvall, Looking Up, 2022. Two small blue aeroplanes at the centre of the green field. As you walk the path the colours change over — green, blue, grey. This turned out to be my personal favourite spot.

Fabric prints stretched like sails across a pergola: Hideyuki Ishibashi's Trails — Under the pergola, Hideyuki Ishibashi’s Trails (2020). Several hundred photographs taken while walking through a forest, layered along the track recorded by GPS. A record of walking, passed through on foot.

Godzilla Standing in an Old Ethnographic Photograph

An area where easel-like panels are scattered across the lawn. Denilson Baniwa, an artist of the Baniwa people of the Brazilian Amazon: Colonial Fictions (2021).

Denilson Baniwa's Colonial Fictions: a blue monster composited into an old ethnographic photograph — Denilson Baniwa, Colonial Fictions, 2021. Godzilla, standing in a nineteenth-century ethnographic photograph.

Photographs taken from the nineteenth into the early twentieth century by Western expeditions and anthropologists to document “primitive peoples.” Into them, images from the movies — King Kong, Godzilla, the Alien, the Kraken — have been composited without apology.

A work by Denilson Baniwa in which the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is composited into an old ethnographic photograph — The Marshmallow Man, in the rapids of “59. In der Stromschnelle von Karaiuamelu, Rio Uraricuera.” The original caption is left inside the work.

Bilingual Japanese-English wall text for Denilson Baniwa's Colonial Fictions — The wall texts are in Japanese and English, standing outdoors one per work. Easy to read, which was good.

Walking the Garden

Three large panels from Ayaka Endo's Kamuy Mosir standing at the edge of the woods: a white snake, a horse's eye, red bleeding into rock — Three at the edge of the woods: Ayaka Endo’s Kamuy Mosir (2020). A white snake, a horse’s eye, red bleeding into rock. The series began from the experience of being abruptly cut off from society during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it asks how much of what we call “nature” is in fact inseparable from human activity. A spot where Mt. Asama can be seen behind.

Three still-life photographs from ARCHIVES's Vanitas on a long horizontal panel beside the garden path — Beside the path, three still lifes on a long horizontal panel: ARCHIVES’s Vanitas. The fruit, game consoles and tablets arranged here are all fictional images generated by AI, and none of the lettering that looks like brand logos actually exists.

The facade installation seen from the garden path at MMoP — Looking at the facade from the path. Planting is everywhere, and I got to enjoy the nature as much as the photographs.

A bench and parasol in the garden at MMoP — A bench and a parasol. There is somewhere to rest between one work and the next.

Taking Photographs Out from Under the Roof

An hour and a half from Tokyo by Shinkansen and local line; twenty minutes by train from Karuizawa. On until 27 September. ¥1,500 lets you return as often as you like during the run, so there may also be pleasure in going twice, to see the difference between summer light and early-autumn light.