In 2024, photographer Tamaki Yoshida was awarded the Ruinart Japan Award and undertook a residency at Ruinart, the historic champagne house in Reims, France. This project began as an inquiry into the memory embedded within the natural landscape of Champagne.
Beneath the vineyards, layers of limestone strata have accumulated over millennia, storing minerals and time itself. The deep roots of the vines extend into this reservoir, carrying the imprints of the past forward into new life. Observing this landscape, Yoshida came to see the soil not merely as matter, but as a vessel of memory—a layered archive of transformation and continuity.
“Does a photograph truly fix the past in place? Or does it shift in meaning, resonating anew as time unfolds?”
Her reflections deepened through an encounter at a fossil excavation site, where she saw traces of life from millions of years ago preserved in stone, waiting to be unearthed by a future gaze. She began to perceive photography in a similar way—images, too, can be buried in time, only to resurface and be rediscovered. In response, she expanded her practice beyond the act of photographing: she buried her images in the soil of Champagne itself.
Decomposing leaves, slugs and fungi, earth dissolving into itself, and the lifeless body of a bird found by the roadside—these elements were placed within the Room of Soil, where they rest beneath the floor, merging with unseen layers of time. Their presence, though buried, quietly rises to the surface.
Gradually, Yoshida’s gaze turned toward the unseen rhythms of life and death, beyond the reach of human hands. She listened to the distant calls of deer echoing from the depths of the forest, their presence sensed but never seen—until, as her time in Champagne neared its end, one finally emerged before her eyes. The vitality of its form, together with the flight of birds overhead, became central to the Room of Regeneration. Here, Yoshida sealed these images, along with elements from the land itself, into hand-pulled washi paper, embedding time within its fibers. The works are arranged to embody the ceaseless movement of life—rising from the earth, dissolving into it, and returning once more.
Echoes from the Soil is an exploration of photography beyond its conventional role as a static record. Seeking to heighten the purity of seeing, Yoshida engages in a dialogue between images, space, and time, asking how memory, held within the earth, continues to reverberate into the future.

Text: Yumi Goto

From KYOTOGRAPHIE2025 official website