Okinawa!!

In 2019, she explores this territory where thirty-two American military bases and some ten thousand GIs remain. She is producing a series of black and white photographs in 6 × 9 (vertical) format, focusing on the outskirts of the bases, where the omnipresent nature seems to offer a form of resistance to this occupation. This first series marks the start of a wider exploration.

In 2023, she travels to the Smithsonian archives in Washington, D.C., to research botanist Egbert H. Walker (1899-1991), who directed a major post-war project in the Ryūkyū Islands. As part of the Servicemen's Collecting Program, Walker mobilized American soldiers to collect natural specimens (plants, corals, minerals...) from the territories they occupied. In 1951, he supervised the collection of over eight thousand plant samples from areas scarred by the violent fighting of the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. From these archives, Victoire Thierrée selected forty herbarium plates, which she photographed in black and white. Okinawa!! brings together these two series of photographs.

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