I’ve just come back from another road trip to London, Antwerp, Amsterdam and Bruges a familiar circuit.

I spent time with much loved family and friends, wandered through markets and took photos.

Food for the soul.

A real highlight was in Amsterdam: Shima no Ama at Huis Marseille. Kusukazu Uraguchi’s photographs of the ama — the Japanese fisherwomen and free-divers — caught me completely. The work is quiet, respectful and beautifully human. It stayed with me long after I left the gallery, the way truly attentive images do.

Kusukazu Uraguchi (1922–1988) was a Japanese photographer born in the coastal region of Shima, who devoted over thirty years of his life — starting from the mid‑1950s — to documenting the lives of the ama: an all‑female community of Japanese fisherwomen and free‑divers.

Over decades Uraguchi built a vast archive of tens of thousands of negatives, capturing the ama diving for seaweed and abalone, working along the shores, gathering in their coastal communities, and partaking in their traditional rituals and festivals.


What distinguishes his photography is the respect, depth and immediacy with which he portrayed these women — not as exotic subjects, but as living, breathing humans immersed in a demanding, ancient vocation. His black‑and‑white images (many dating from the 1960s through the 1980s) use high contrast, deliberate framing, and spontaneous gestures to convey strength, resilience and quiet dignity in everyday work.

Thanks to a recent rediscovery and curation of his archive, the exhibition Shima no Ama — currently at Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography in Amsterdam — gathers a selection of eighty of these photographs, along with restored vintage wooden‑panel prints and a new video compilation.

Uraguchi’s work stands as a powerful visual record of a vanishing way of life — and a testament to the endurance, skill and dignity of the ama.