My Square Scene

“My Square Scene” is catalogued as Naoyuki Iwashita’s first photobook, published in 2000 in a near-square format (250×260mm, 137 pages). The listing notes an acknowledgment to Shoji Ueda inside the book and states that Ueda supported the proofreading. Ueda passed away on July 4, 2000, which places this publication right on a historical seam where influence becomes inheritance. 

To read this book, it helps to situate it around “Ueda-cho” (the “Ueda style”): staged photography built on the San’in horizon line, where figures and objects are positioned like elements on a set. The style was introduced abroad under the name “Ueda-cho,” emphasizing composition as a deliberate act rather than a byproduct of observation. 

The subtitle also points to a square logic. Ueda’s long-running series “Small Biography” (1974–1985) relied heavily on the 6×6 near-square frame, treating the camera as a device for direct, pared-down encounters.  With a square-ish book in hand, the spreads tend to be read as flat stages: direction, margins, empty space, and the placement of a subject against sea and mountains. The result is a photobook that turns regional landscape into a repeatable grammar of form.

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