Classroom

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/9.0 · 1/6 · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

Dust settles on desks and chairs inside the abandoned Family School Fureai classroom. Textbooks lie open, forgotten. Sunlight filters through grimy windows, illuminating the decay.

Edition

Open edition

Open edition
Printed to order, no fixed quantity. Each print is hand-signed by the photographer.

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A fixed number of prints exist. Once sold, the edition closes permanently. Each print is individually numbered and signed.

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Colour

Signed, numbered, with COA. Made to order in 10 to 20 business days (framed). Shipped in protective packaging with edition certificate, paper-stock reference and a printed care guide.

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In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Classroom
Series: Family School Fureai
Catalogue: FSF-009
Process: Giclée
Captured: 28 April 2016
Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/9.0
Shutter: 1/6 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

A classroom on one of the upper floors of Family School Fureai is laid out with tatami mats on the floor instead of the usual school-desk arrangement. The mats are intact but stained at the edges from damp. A low timber beam runs across the back wall. Built-in cabinets sit along the side wall, some with their doors hanging open, the contents long since cleared out. A window above the cabinets looks across the school grounds. The room is large enough to sleep six children comfortably, which was the point. The tatami pattern is the dominant texture in the frame.

When the building was reopened in 1994, it became a public lodging and group training facility, and the original classrooms were repurposed as guest rooms with tatami flooring. The tatami flooring was a deliberate choice. It made the rooms more domestic, less institutional. The lodging ran until 2006. The tatami mats have been here since the 1990s, doing exactly what they were laid down to do.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A tatami mat flooring of one of the classrooms also used as a sleeping area.

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.