Gas Station

Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 15mm · f/8.0 · 1/320 · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

A derelict gas station stands silent in Yubari, Japan. Rusted pumps and faded signage mark a past era. This structure reflects the city's decline after its coal mines closed. Weeds push through cracks in the forecourt.

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In situ

Print datasheet

Title: Gas Station
Series: Streetscapes of Yubari
Catalogue: SYU-009
Process: Giclée
Captured: 28 April 2016
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 290 × 200 mm
Location: Yubari, Hokkaido, Japan

Where this was photographed

Yubari, Hokkaido, Japan

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

About this print

A former petrol station sits on the way into Yubari, Hokkaido. The pump island is intact, with two pumps under the original canopy, but the pumps themselves are dry and the canopy has been damaged. The retail building behind the pumps is single-storey, weatherboard, the windows boarded over. A small carwash bay extends from one side. The forecourt is cracked concrete with grass coming up through the joints. The sign at the road frontage is partially fallen, the panel hanging off its post.

Yubari's population at peak in 1960 was around 116,000. By 2018, when this photograph was made, it had fallen below 8,000. A petrol station at the entrance to the city served traffic that doesn't come any more: shift workers driving in for the mines, families coming back from holidays, freight trucks moving coal, gear, and supplies. As the volumes fell, stations like this one stopped being viable, and one by one they closed. The next operating station is now twenty kilometres back along the road. The closed station in this photograph is the first sign for a driver coming in that the town does not work the way it used to.

From the field notes

Former gas station on the way into Yubari.

— Brett Patman

The series

Streetscapes of Yubari

2018 · 54 photographs

Yūbari is a coal-mining city in central Hokkaido. Founded in 1943, its population peaked at around 120,000 in the 1960s and now sits at about 6,400. The colliery closed in the 1980s. The city's attempt to recover through tourism failed; in 2007 it became the first Japanese municipality to declare bankruptcy, owing 35.3 billion yen. These streetscapes were taken between the houses, shops, and schools the town no longer needs - most empty, some half-collapsed, some still in use by the people who stayed.

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