Chair Storage Area

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/9.0 · 1/160 · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

An area to the side of the cafeteria where dining chairs were packed away after the school closed its doors for the last time in 1983.

Edition

Open edition

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In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Chair Storage Area
Series: Family School Fureai
Catalogue: FSF-008
Process: Giclée
Captured: 28 April 2016
Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/9.0
Shutter: 1/160 s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 14 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 290 × 200 mm
Location: Yubari, Hokkaido, Japan
Authenticity: C2PA verified provenance →
Recognised by: Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards

02 LOCATION

Yubari, Hokkaido, Japan

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

The chair storage area at Family School Fureai is a long narrow room next to the cafeteria, lined floor to ceiling with stacked dining chairs. The chairs are timber, with vinyl seats, the kind that schools across Japan ordered by the hundred from the same handful of manufacturers in the postwar decades. They have been stacked here since the elementary school closed. Dust has settled on the topmost row in a thick coat. Below it, the chairs in the stack are largely intact, their vinyl seats cracking but the timber frames still sound. The far wall has a single window that lets in cold light.

The chairs were stacked when the elementary school closed in 1983. The dormitory that took over in 1994 didn't need chairs of this kind in this volume, and the chairs stayed where they had been put. By the time this photograph was made in 2016, they had been in their stacks for thirty-three years. Some of the chairs may have been pulled out occasionally for use during the dormitory years, but the stack as a whole has not been broken up. There were no plans to use them again. There were also no plans to throw them out. They sit, in their stack, waiting for a decision that nobody seems to be in a hurry to make.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

An area to the side of the cafeteria where dining chairs were packed away after the school closed its doors for the last time in 1983.

Brett Patman

The series

Family School Fureai

2016 · 30 photographs

Family School Fureai stands on a hillside at the northern end of Yubari in Hokkaido. The building opened on 1 April 1975 as Asahi Elementary School, a new three-storey reinforced-concrete structure built on the site of the demolished wooden Yubari Second Elementary (Daini). It consolidated three local schools - Daini, Fukuzumi and Teibi - that had lost most of their students as Yubari's coal industry shrank. By the early 1980s enrolment had collapsed; the school closed on 31 March 1983 after just eight years. The building stayed empty until Yubari City's tourism third-sector firm Yubari Kanko Kaihatsu, established October 1994, repurposed it as the Family School Fureai public dormitory. In June 2006 Yubari City announced its fiscal collapse; the city formally entered financial reconstruction status on 6 March 2007 and YKK ceased trading 31 March 2007 with ¥5.46 billion of debt. The building has sat empty since. Inside there is no graffiti - only kanji on the chalkboards. Deer and foxes use it now.

View all in this series →

05 SIZE GUIDE

Print sizes

The anatomy view shows what this finish is as a physical object: paper margin, mat band, frame depth, acrylic profile. The comparison strip shows how each size sits relative to the others at true scale. Click a size or a finish to update both.