Publisher/PGI

Google翻訳
"Monuments" is a collection of works by Japanese photographer Takashi Arai (1978-). Takashi Arai is a photographer who has continued his unique practice of superimposing traces of history with the light of the present using daguerreotypes (silver plate photographs) with pre-war large-format cameras. The images etched onto the silver plates are landscapes that are before our eyes now, yet they evoke echoes of the past with subtle reflections and fluctuations, making visible the moment when layers of memory and time quietly intersect. This book is a series of photographs carefully taken of "places of memory" such as Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Fukushima, and was published in 2015, becoming an important work that was the recipient of the 41st Kimura Ihei Photography Award. What is captured there is not a documentary landscape, but the materiality of the silver surface itself that emerges when it receives light, and the landscape seems to rise up as a silent witness. The swaying of the plants and trees, the outlines of the buildings, and even the slight cloudiness of the sky are burned onto the surface of the image along with the time etched into the land, prompting the viewer to question the nature of memory. This collection of works, which forms the core of Arai's activities, strongly reflects his stance of confronting history through the light of the present, rather than directly narrating the past.