These photographs are fragments from an ongoing, long-term project that documents life in a small, rural village in central Japan. 

While the village is in the middle of a variety of challenging social, economic and environmental changes, there are many habits, values and aspects of the everyday life that remain immutable. Through its strong traditions, the local community has been able to guarantee some measure of preservation against the rapid changes which are trying to impose themselves on the village's way of life.

This series forms a body of personal research into the identity of a community. My goal is to observe the locals' "normality" while doing my best to simply be part of the flow. All the while, I lay in wait for the unusual to leak between the cracks of ordinary. 

—Fabrizio Quagliuso