*Available Mid-November 2026. Pre-order now.

We are pleased to announce the publication of Mayumi Suzuki’s photobook The Tide’s Gift. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, Suzuki has repeatedly returned to her hometown of Onagawa, Miyagi Prefecture over the course of fifteen years, pursuing a practice guided by the question: “What is a hometown?”

A third-generation owner of a photo studio in Onagawa, Suzuki grew up steeped in photography. She has built a body of work that finds liberation in self-expression, weaving stories through images. Her debut series, The Restoration Will, quietly bears witness to the aftermath of a disaster she and her family endured, and contemplates the future ahead. This new series, The Tide’s Gift, emerged from nine years of ongoing reflection, reimagining Onagawa—once swept away by the waves—through photographs and archival materials.

Portraits of the people of Onagawa and landscapes captured over time using large-format cameras, digital cameras, or drones; old photographs taken at the photo studio by her grandfather or father; archival materials from the town of Onagawa; and her own writing—all come together as a mode of visual storytelling made possible only through photography. Conceived as a comprehensive body of work in book form, the publication encompasses the accumulated time and history of people who have continued to live on the same land despite the many setbacks they have faced. It also offers one possible answer to the question “What is a hometown?”—a fundamental question that has occupied her over the years.

Taking the Great East Japan Earthquake as its starting point, the book goes beyond narratives of adversity. The various materials speak to us in their own voices, each unfolding along its own timeline. Meticulously designed by Akiko Wakabayashi, the publication seems to envelop itself in its own cover.

There are fragments and trauma and there is erasure. We can see but we cannot know the gaps. But perhaps an acknowledgement of the space between is the pathway for compassion, even across geographical boundaries and cultures.

―Martin Barnes (from the text in this book)