ABOUT
From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, renowned Japanese war photographer Akihiko Okamura (1929-1985) created a remarkable, compelling and largely unseen body of work in Ireland, north and south. After covering the Vietnam War, Okamura went to Ireland in 1968 and soon after, in 1969, he decided to move to Ireland with his family. From then on, he continually photographed the Troubles in the North and his life with his family in the South, until he suddenly passed away, in 1985.
His photographs of Ireland, which have barely been seen before, demonstrate a unique artistic vision. His profound, personal relationship with Ireland allowed him to develop a new method of documenting conflict: poetic and ethereal moments of peace in a time of war.
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OFFICIAL SELECTION DOCNYC NEW YORK CITY 2025
PERFORMANCE INSPIRED BY PHOTOS FROM OKAMURA
official selection IRISH FILM FESTIVAL Tokyo 2025
Belfast premiere, Feile na Phobail 2025
SPECIAL SCREENING, BOOKS AT ONE, LOUISBURGH, MAYO, 2025
official selection IRISH FILM FESTIVAL florence 2025
Official selection Irish Berlin Film Festival 2025
SPECIAL MENTION, IRISH FILM FESTIVAL ROME 2025
AUDIENCE AWARD, CAPITAL IRISH FILM FESTIVAL 2025
Winner of the Special Mention Award at Arles Photo Fair 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR PHOTOBOOK OF THE YEAR AT PARIS PHOTO FAIR 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIX NADAR 2024
Official selection for the Galway Film Fleadh 2024
WORLD PREMIERE EXHIBITION AT PHOTO MUSEUM IRELAND
RTE INTERVIEW ON THE EXHIBITION
INSPIRED by akihiko Okamura
Necromancer is a bold new interdisciplinary performance work, created by six leading artists in music and movement. Conceived as a musical ‘exorcism’, the piece responds to a series of haunting photographs taken during the Troubles in Northern Ireland by Japanese photojournalist Akihiko Okamura, who settled south of Dublin in the late 1960s. Blending composed and improvised music with physical performance, Necromancer channels a collective ritual of memory, witness and transformation.
Ian Wilson is one of Ireland’s most distinctive contemporary composers, whose emotionally resonant and structurally daring works explore life, loss, the limits of listening, and a borderless approach to musical language.
Dario Calderone is an acclaimed Italian double bassist known for his compelling solo performances, technical command, and visionary interpretations of the most demanding contemporary repertoire.
Lina Andonovska is a fearless Australian flautist whose genre-crossing virtuosity and deep commitment to new music have made her a leading voice on stages from the Sydney Opera House to experimental spaces across Europe and the USA.
Cathal Roche is a boundary-pushing Irish saxophonist and composer whose work fuses improvisation, electronics and text with an instinctive sensitivity to space and narrative.
Alex Petcu is a dynamic Irish percussionist whose expressive precision and adventurous programming have made him a key figure in Ireland’s contemporary music scene and a sought-after collaborator for new and experimental work.
Justine Cooper is a Dublin-based choreographer whose multidisciplinary practice draws on movement, sound and visual art to create atmospherically charged performance works with powerful emotional and political resonance.
Premiere performance at The Chocolate Factory, Dublin, 12th October 2025
MEDIA
- Akihiko Okamura, a Japanese witness to a torn Ireland by Claire Guillot, Le Monde, 13 October 2024
- ‘The surreal dislocation of the everyday’: how Japanese photographer Akihiko Okamura captured the Troubles as never before by Sean O’Hagan, The Guardian, 7 April 2024
- In Pictures: The Troubles through the lens of a Japanese war photographer by Glen Murphy, The Irish Times, 11 April 2024
- Akihiko Okamura’s Outsider View of Northern Ireland by Declan Long, Aperture, 26 June 2024
- Derry via Tokyo: How an outsider captured the Troubles in colour by Mark Durden, British Journal of Photography, 9 June 2024
- The Disrupted Everyday: Sean O’Hagan on Akihiko Okamura’s Irish photos by Sean O’Hagan, RTE Culture, 16 April 2024
- Japanese war photographer who documented Ireland’s Troubles by Mark O’Sullivan Vallig, Irish Examiner, 15 April 2024
DOCUMENTARY
The Memories of Others
Directed by Pauline Vermare and Marc Lesser
Produced by Lucky Tiger Productions, New York, 2024, 20mn
Featuring interviews with Tom Burke, Sean O’Hagan, Anthony Haughey, Rihito Kimura, Trish Lambe, Kusi Okamura, and Masako Toda. Music by Crash Ensemble and Louth Contemporary Music Society.
Film Premiere: 8.30 pm on Thursday 11 April in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar
MUSIC CREDITS
“Canons and Overtones”
Composed by Donnacha Dennehy Performed by Crash Ensemble
‘Flow’ (2018)
For String Trio
Composed by Sam Perkin
Violin: Mia Cooper
Vous: Joachim Roewer
Cello: William Butt
Special thanks to Eamonn Quinn
Released by Louth CMS
Recording by Piotr Furmanczyk
www.louthcms.org
www.samperkincomposer.com
Originally commissioned by Aoife Burke
Supported by Arts Council Ireland
PHOTOBOOK
A new photobook published by acclaimed publishers Atelier EXB (co-published in English by Prestel), edited by Pauline Vermare, in collaboration with the Akihiko Okamura Archive and Photo Museum Ireland, brings together for the first time the images taken by Akihiko Okamura in Ireland. It accompanies the exhibition on view at Dublin’s Photo Museum Ireland (April-June 2024).
Several texts accompany the photos in this photobook, with essays by Pauline Vermare, Masako Toda, Seán O’Hagan and texts by Kusi Okamura and Trish Lambe.
GALLERY
The website was made in collaboration with the Estate of Akihiko Okamura, Hakodate, Photo Museum Ireland, Dublin, Atelier EXB, Paris, and Lucky Tiger Productions, New York.
Special thanks to photography historian and curator Pauline Vermare.
All rights of the photographs reserved by the Estate of Akihiko Okamura
Webdesign by Kusi Okamura
Send queries to contact@akihiko-okamura.ie
