Our memories are intimately tied to photographs. Whether a childhood portrait or sunset selfie, the photograph represents not just the captured moment…
Our memories are intimately tied to photographs. Whether a childhood portrait or sunset selfie, the photograph represents not just the captured moment, but how that moment is currently remembered. It’s nearly impossible to separate memory from the reality of experience. Walking down the street, we ignore one thing and gravitate towards another, while landmarks anchor us within a geographical space. But what captures or escapes our attention defines our recollection of that place. Japanese photographer Sohei Nishino’s work encapsulates this transient relationship between personal experience, memory, and place. Photography, like memory, is also defined by what is included or excluded from the frame. Like any curious photographer, Nishino weaves his way through each new city, making decisions about how to portray his surroundings. “When I’m shooting,” he says, “I am always thinking about what I’m trying to see within the events in front of me, what I am focusing on and how I feel about it.” An individual image can anchor the portrayal, but it’s how each fragment is pieced together that defines the journey and transports Nishino’s work into an expansive new realm.
To create one of his Diorama Maps, Japanese artist and cartographer Sohei Nishino spends an intense month exploring a city on foot; shooting, developing thousands of photographs followed by several more months cutting, pasting and arranging the re-imagined city.
The works of Mandy Barker, Saskia Groneberg, Beate Guetschow, Rinko Kawauchi, Benny Lam, Richard Mosse, Wasif Munem, Sohei Nishino, Sergey Ponomarev, Thomas Ruff, Pavel Wolberg and Michael Wolf will be featured in an exhibition opening at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London on May 4, 2017, when the winner will be announced by Prix Pictet honorary president and former United Nations Secretary General
To create one of his Diorama Maps, Japanese artist and cartographer Sohei Nishino spends an intense month exploring a city on foot; shooting, developi…
To create one of his Diorama Maps, Japanese artist and cartographer Sohei Nishino spends an intense month exploring a city on foot; shooting, developing thousands of photographs followed by several more months cutting, pasting and arranging the re-imagined city. His first ‘re-experience’ of a city was his home town of Osaka
Sohei Nishino, 1982, Japan, has made 100 thousands of images, yet only has 12 photographs in his portfolio. The way he works only permits him to finish three images in one year. He walks in a city for a month or longer, photographing all the buildings from every possible angle. In the following months he hand prints a selection of several thousand images to piece them all together with scissors and glue to make one single map of that city.