Ai Iwane
Born in Tokyo, in 1975. She relocated to the United States and enrolled in Petrolia High School in 1991. In 1996, she began her career as a photographer. Since 2006, Iwane has focused on the culture of the Japanese community in Hawaii, and until now, she has continuously examined the relevance between Hawaii and Fukushima from the aspect of immigration through extensive research and fieldwork. Iwane published her first book KIPUKA (Seigensha Art Publishing, 2018). She was awarded The 44th Kimura Ihei Photography Award and The 44th Ina Nobuo Award. Iwane was an associate producer of the documentary film Bon-uta (directed by Yuji Nakae, 2018 Telecom Staff).Her latest work, A New River, which photographed the cherry blossoms of the Tohoku region in the spring of 2020, was exhibited in “Twilight Daylight: Contemporary Japanese Photography vol.17” at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; a collection of her work, A New River (bookshop M), was published at the same time.She receipt the 37th Higashikawa New Photographer Award (2021).Publications include Kipuka e-no tabi (Journey Towards KIPUKA) (Ota Publishing, 2019) and Hawaii shima-no bondance (Bon Dance in the Big Island) (Fukuinkan Shoten Publishers, Inc.,2016).
