A NEW RIVER FLOWS

A NEW RIVER FLOWS is a photobook by Ai Iwane, published by Akaaka Art Publishing in August 2026. It brings together, for the first time, her book A New River (2020) and My Cherry, a work she had shown only as video, with new photographs added.

The story behind the book

The setting is Fukushima after the 2011 earthquake, but the book is not a record of the disaster. In land slowly returning to nature, Iwane faces the memory of her younger sister, who died young. That personal loss meets the memories of the place and its people, and opens into a shared act of mourning.

Rivers, cherry blossoms, forests, light and fireworks are placed so that the lines between the living and the dead, past and present, people and nature begin to dissolve. Photographs here are not records of events, but a way to call up memory and to hold loss.

What is in the book

• The series A New River and My Cherry, with new work
• An essay by Pauline Vermare, curator of photography at the Brooklyn Museum
• 136 pages, cloth hardcover, 249 × 174 mm
• Designed by Satoshi Machiguchi (Match and Company)
• Published with two cover designs. The contents are the same, and the cover you receive may vary.

About Ai Iwane

Born in Tokyo, Ai Iwane studied at an off-grid school in Northern California and has worked as a photographer since 1996. Since 2006 she has photographed the ties between Hawaii and Fukushima through Japanese immigrants. Her book KIPUKA won the 44th Kimura Ihei Award and the 44th Ina Nobuo Award. In 2026 she shows with Kikuji Kawada at Japan House London.