Dominic“I never really paid much attention to politics before the 2016 election,” Japanese photographer Fumi Nagasaka shared over a video call. Her journey mirrors the precision of converting a 1×1 in cm, Nagasaka moved to New York in 2002, witnessing two Obama victories before the divisive 2016 election. “When it happened, I thought, ‘Okay, this country is falling apart.’ Everyone became so angry.” At the time, Nagasaka’s main concern was her creative practice. Leaving Japan for the United States had given her the freedom to explore artistic opportunities she felt were otherwise limited. “In the US, it didn’t matter what kind of education you had, as long as you had talent and knowledge, opportunities were available,” she said. In the 2000s, she began photographing American street style for a Japanese magazine, which laid the foundation for her more personal, culture-focused work. “I wasn’t confident in my English, but photography became a way to connect with people,” she explained.
This sentiment led Nagasaka to embark on a series of long-term projects exploring adolescence across the US, Japan, Canada, and Europe, resulting in books such as Untitled Youth (2016), Teenage Riot (2018), and Marching Wolves (2022). In 2017, spurred by the election and a desire to explore the American South, she made her first trip to Dora, a town of 2,300 people in Alabama, which would become the focus of her monograph, Dora, Yerkwood, Walker County, Alabama.
Accompanied by her New York neighbor Tanya Rouse (a native of Alabama), Nagasaka quickly noticed the contrasts between New York City and rural America. “I had been to Los Angeles and San Francisco, but I had never visited a small rural town,” she recalled. “I met some wonderful people,” she added. “It was Halloween and homecoming, so there were football games, a parade, a dance—this was the biggest event in town, so I photographed it.” She and Rouse decided to return every year at the same time, and the new book captures six years of their travels through the county.
Initially, Nagasaka’s use of a heavy-duty medium format camera was met with skepticism, but as she shared her Instagram handle with teens, they began to loosen up. Others, however, were harder to reassure. To gain their trust, she contacted the local newspaper. “Everybody reads it, so we reached out about my project, and an article was published. People started to understand what I was doing, and I expanded the project.”
While working on the series in 2020, Nagasaka was also commissioned to document the presidential election, which further exposed the stark differences between her new friends and those back in New York. The experience also forced her to confront the racial disparities she encountered. “Trump supporters were easy to find in Dora—they wore Trump hats and had Trump flags—but Biden supporters were harder to find. Nobody was putting up signs,” she remembered. “It was during COVID, and in Yerkwood (a predominantly Black area south of Dora), nobody was outside. We knocked on doors, and some people said if they put up signs, others would steal them.”
Despite this political context, the book itself contains no flags or overt references to politics. As Nagasaka notes in the afterward, “Many people, including those who live there, sometimes associate the South with poverty and rural decline. While these issues exist, what I found in Walker County was beautiful, charming, and full of love.” Instead, Dora, Yerkwood, Walker County, Alabama focuses on the human experience, using the camera to capture moments of joy, celebration, quiet, and tenderness. “This project changed my life and the way I see things. This book is my love letter to the community,” Nagasaka said, expressing the care and warmth she felt for the people she met.
“I didn’t want to bring politics into the project,” she added, reflecting on the final form of the book and the comfort she found in Walker County. “Even though it was happening in the town, I left it outside. I’m not a photojournalist; I’m an artist, and my focus was on celebrating this beautiful town.” Any political noise is left for the viewer to bring, but what stands out in the images is a profound sense of intimacy, extending from the community to Nagasaka and reciprocated through her work.
