Hashima is a small island located off the extreme southwest coast of Japan, about ten miles from Nagasaki. Its dark

warshiplike 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.