Hashima is a small island located off the extreme southwest coast of Japan, about ten miles from Nagasaki. Its dark
warship-like silhouette earned it the nickname of Gunkanjima (“battleship island”). During the wave of industrialisation
in the nineteenth century, a coal seam was discovered on the island and the Mitsubishi corporation opened a mine
there. Workers settled on the island and the population increased, the small mining town quickly becoming a modern
and autonomous settlement. During the 1950s, Gunkanjima became one of the most densely populated places in the
world with over 5,000 inhabitants. But after an accident and the restructuring of the Mitsubishi mining project, the mine
closed in January 1974. The last inhabitants deserted the island, the connection by boat was suspended, and since then
Gunkanjima has become a ghost town. Marchand and Meffre photographed the island between 2008 and 2012.
Born in 1981 and 1987 in the Parisian suburbs, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre began to photograph separately
in 2001. They began working together for their project on the urban decay of Detroit in 2005, which Steidl published
to acclaim as The Ruins of Detroit in 2010.
Gunkanjima
von Romain Meffre, Yves Marchand
