Yoichiro Nishimura’s Camera-less Photography

Description

Acclaimed Japanese artist Yoichiro Nishimura (b. 1967, Tokyo) will exhibit a selection of photographs from his two catalogue raisonné – “Life” and “Blue Flower” published in 1999 and 2016, respectively, in Hong Kong for the first time.

“Life” is a homage to the beauty of Nishimura’s own Ikebana (the Japanese art of flower arrangement) which he captures by photographing flowers under natural light in a dark setting.

“Blue Flower” is an award-winning series created with a new photographic technique called ‘Scangram’, which Nishimura invented. The Scangram was inspired by renowned avant-garde artist Man Ray’s (1890–1976) photogram, an old and classic shooting technique in which the subject is placed on chemically treated, light-sensitive material and exposed to a light. The usual result is a negative shadow image. Nishimura’s pioneering technique creates a luminous negative digital equivalent of a photogram. The visual reversed effect adds a mystic silhouette as if the image is captured under a moonlight. Nishimura sometimes describes his “Blue Flower” series as “flowers of the shadow”.