松江泰治『gazetteerCC』       Book Design：秋山伸 + 和田悠馬 [edition.nord]      発行：赤々舎   Size： H275mm × W360mm   Page：280 pages   Binding：Hardcover   Limited 800, signed, edition numbered   Published in January 2023    ISBN：978-4-86541-163-8	¥ 13,000＋tax  国内送料無料！ 【国内／Domestic Shipping】  お支払い方法は、銀行振込、郵便振替、 クレジットカード支払い、PayPal、PayPay よりお選び頂けます。 【海外／International Shipping】 ＊ Please choose your area from the two below    　　　 Book + Asia shipping ¥19,350 JPY Book + World shipping ¥22,850JPY

gazetteerCC 

Matsue Taiji

"The photographs collected in this book were digitally scanned and digitally printed from color negatives, which Taiji Matsue shot using an analog process between 2000 and 2017.

The artist has actually been working in color for quite a long time in addition to his black-and-white photography. However, the nature of the analog color printing process is such that printing color negatives onto photographic paper blurs the "absolute focus" (to be explained below) that is most essential to Matsue's work, so he refrained from presenting these works and waited for advances in digital technology. In 2008, digital scanning and printing technology of sufficient quality became available, and Matsue made a major shift toward color which continues to this day.

While digital photography has long followed in the footsteps of film photography and attempted to mimic it, it has been considered a different kind of medium, with nonstraightforward imagery subject to manipulation and not serving as an index of reality, and this contextualization has been generally accepted. However, in recent years digital photographic technology has progressed far beyond the stage of imitations of negativebased analog photography, and is fundamentally transforming the nature of the medium.

Naturally, the concepts of framing, focus, cropping and so forth that were prerequisites for conventional photography are also being disrupted. Matsue's work not only anticipates these disruptions, but also responds to them.

The series in this photo book, CC and gazetteer, are not made up of aerial photographs.

They are landscapes shot from sites at high elevation, selected after careful research (on accessibility, daylight hours, angle of light, best shooting time), and as a rule -- as far as conditions on the ground permit -- are not bird's-eye views but direct head-on shots of the scenery. There are four conditions that must be met: clear skies, lighting from the front, head-on shots, and absolute focus. As a rule, photographs should be taken on a sunny day in good light, and in terms of angle, the subjects should be seen from the front. The all-over images, which do not use vertical but only horizontal positioning and have no visible horizon line, eliminate spatial and temporal depth that automatically emerges as the viewer's gaze moves along a vertical axis, block the viewer's gaze from wandering "beyond" the horizon, and rebuff the viewer's emotional investment in the image while bringing everything in it to the foreground. The viewer's attention is directed to the depth of the excessive, highresolution information packed into the image, rather than to spatial depth. This is what is meant by "absolute focus": the focus position that is not reliant on the naked eye, but absolute in terms of the lens, is the focal point, and the moment when all the light focuses into an image at the focal point is the moment when that light comes from an infinite distance. In other words, "absolute focus" is the focus that is achieved automatically based on the principles of the lens when a scene is shot with the focus adjusted to infinity, with the word "absolute" referring not to "completeness" from a human perspective but to the fact that it is not premised on the human gaze.［...]

This book, compiled with the addition of many previously unreleased works, consists of a total of 262 photographs numbered from 001 to 262, with "ALPS" (001) and "YOSEMITE" (262) as the entrance and exit, so to speak, and all the photographs arranged in pairs (even-numbered + odd-numbered). "ALPS," which opens the book, is a 2011 re-shooting of "ALPS 1996 #12" (1996), which also appears on the cover of Hysteric Matsue Taiji (2001), the completed form of the black-and-white series gazetteer, and Matsue photographed the same landscape again in 2018. It is what is known as a fixed-point observation of a landscape that has not changed over the past 20-odd years. YOSEMITE, which closes the book, shows the El Capitan peak photographed from Taft Point in Yosemite National Park. It is still the same landscape, but superimposed with photographic history and with a tribute to Carleton Watkins, a longtime inspiration to the artist.［...]

Matsue's photographs capture and contain all the information in a landscape, whether the photographer is looking at it or not. Regardless of whether or not we recognize it, everything in the world exists at any given time.

"Excess of photography" is not a reference to the world's inundation with an overabundance of photographs. It means that a human being cannot look at a photograph and see it all at once in its entirety. This is because when we see a photograph, the act of looking inevitably casts a shadow on it, inevitably generating an invisible blind spot. In capturing sweeping views of cities and nature from high above, Taiji Matsue's photographs remind us of the impossibility of a true panoramic view. By doing so, they open up photography to the wealth of details as yet unseen.

Extracted from the text "Excess of Photography"

 by Minoru Shimizu

(Art critic / Professor, Faculty of Global and Regional Studies, Doshisha University)

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Special Set Item

 

『gazetteerCC』＋『TAIJI MATSUE』     『TAIJI MATSUE』    発行：Ugeyan Co Ltd,     Size： H301mm × W378mm   Page：348 pages   Binding：Hardcover（aluminum, silver)   Limited 900(less stock), signed, editon numbered   Published in 2003    ISBN：4-9901746-0-7	¥ 40,000＋tax  国内送料無料！ 【国内／Domestic Shipping】  お支払い方法は、銀行振込、郵便振替、 クレジットカード支払い、PayPal、PayPay よりお選び頂けます。 【海外／International Shipping】 ＊ Please choose your area from the two below    　　　 Book + Asia shipping ¥48,700 JPY Book + World shipping ¥53,700 JPY

2003年に有限会社うげやんから刊行された『TAIJI MATSUE』(900部限定、残部僅少）は、松江泰治が地表を記録し始めた1989年から、木村伊兵衛賞受賞を経て、2002年までの代表作を含む集大成である。「地名」として収められた多様な表層は、敢えて均質な光のもとに撮影され、 砂漠の砂粒から大森林、未踏の地から街までが、その素材の全てをさらけだしている。

TARO NASU GALLERYプロデュースの元、特装本である表紙には、アルミアルマイトが用いられ、中身は、全頁裁ち切りのワイドな画面によって展開している。 オリジナルプリントの質感を可能な限り再現すべく CTP Screening および Fairdot 480という、当時最高レヴェルの高精細な印刷技術が投入され、パーフェクトを追求する松江のスタイルが細部にわたって反映された一冊です。

今回『gazetteerCC』の刊行を記念し、松江泰治の、刊行年代の異なる集大成2冊として、『gazetteerCC』（2023）＋『TAIJI MATSUE』（2003）を特別にセットでもお届け致します。

2冊共にサイン、エディションナンバー入。
※『gazetteerCC』と『TAIJI MATSUE』のエディションナンバーは異なるものになります。
※  セット特別販売価格として、通常、2冊で47,300円（税込）のところ、44,000円（税込）にてお求め頂けます。
※『TAIJI MATSUE』33,000円（税込）のみもご購入頂けます→

On the occasion of the publication of《gazetteerCC》, we will offer《gazetteerCC》+《TAIJI MATSUE》 as a set as two culminations of Taiji Matsue's work from different eras.

《TAIJI MATSUE》published by Ugeyan Co Ltd, in 2003, on Taiji Matsue's photography compiles every one of his masterpieces-from the time he began documenting the surface of the earth in 1989 all the way through to 2002, during which time he received the Kimura Ihee Photography Award. The various surfaces of the earth that are collected in the book as "place names" have been purposefully captured under a homogeneous light, thoroughly exposing the materials seen in the images: from the sand grains in a desert to a vast forest, from an untrodden piece of land to a city. 

In the book, supervision by TARO NASU GALLERY, has an aluminum cover, and the development of these chronologically-compiled works has been done through placing a photo on each side of a two-page spread, with all of the pages containing non-framed, wide-screen images. This book has also incorporated CTP Screening and Fairdot480, featuring most advanced resolution techniques at the time, with the intention of reproducing the closest quality possible to Matsue's original prints.
《TAIJI MATSUE》closely reflects Matsue's style that continuously pursues perfection.

Both titles are signed and edition numbered.
※ The edition numbers of  《gazetteerCC》 and  《TAIJI MATSUE》 are different from each.
※ The special price as a set sale.
※《TAIJI MATSUE 》only is also available→

上原沙也加『眠る木』       Book Design：鈴木千佳子       発行：赤々舎    Size： H219mm × W205mm   Page：160 pages   Binding：Hardcover   Published in December 2022   ISBN：978-4-86541-159-1	¥ 4,500＋tax  国内送料無料！ 【国内／Domestic Shipping】  お支払い方法は、銀行振込、郵便振替、 クレジットカード支払い、PayPal、PayPay よりお選び頂けます。 ※先着購入の方に12ページの冊子が付きます。（なくなり次第終了） 【海外／International Shipping】 ＊ Please choose your area from the two below    　　　 Book + Asia shipping ¥7,400 JPY Book + World shipping ¥8,650 JPY

Sleeping Trees 

Sayaka Uehara

"Walking through the city, there are times that I feel as if I am the one being stared at by the objects around me, capturing my attention. Ordinary residential areas and restaurants, hanging laundry, posters, graves, Japanese flags, mannequins. Various things that people have left behind. Ashtrays and flowerpots, who can only tell us that someone was definitely there but now is here no longer, rapidly reveal the silhouettes of these people. As if doing as I am told with a slight feeling of unease, I quietly pull out my camera and take photographs. Looking at what is fixed in the photographs, what can be seen is still only a modest record of what has been captured. However, in the details of a supposedly familiar landscape, one discovers layers upon layers of brutal traces of the past, a history of political choices and division being constantly imposed on the inhabitants, and various symbols and images. A photograph is always presented as a small fragment before it becomes a part of a collective. There is nothing in a photograph that cannot be seen by the eye. I cannot help but think that within each photo there are multiple connecting pathways to the time when these events occurred. It is like the time I spent visiting a place, or like making eye contact with someone whose face and name I do not know. Or like the fact that there were days that trickled by in that place like small grains, similar to what I am living right now. It quietly demonstrates that the landscape, as well as you and I who are looking at it, will also disappear someday. Yet, no matter how many times the landscape is repainted, the scars that grazed this place will never disappear, no matter how much they are wiped or scrubbed at, and they will continue to stand there firmly and motionlessly in silence. Deeply ingrained memories are always wavering between the open gap between objects." 

Exracted from the afterwords 

by Sayaka Uehara

"Uehara was born in 1993 in Tomigusuku City, south of Naha on Okinawa Island. She grew up and remained in Okinawa until the end of high school, after which she went on to enter the photography program at Tokyo Zokei University, where she took on the mak- ing of her photo series In the White Season as her graduation exhibition. Following the creation of this project, she returned to Okinawa in 2016 and transformed this work into another series, The Others the present series presents a brief history of Sayaka Uehara's 29 years of life in raw time fast-forwarded at ultra-high speed. During these moments when the surge of emotions that resurface with each piece in Sleeping Trees intersects with Uehara's bi- ographical profile that has been compressed into 1/29th of a whole, we come to notice that there are two connecting points in this in- tersection.

What exactly are these two connecting points? One is that of being exposed to an excessively othering gaze when leaving Okinawa and living in an unfamiliar land. It could be considered as a kind of force is drawn to the land known as Okinawa, a land that has experienced repeated yuugawai and border changes. This concentrated and excessive gaze, which was a common expe- rience among other photographers who have left a particularly lasting impression on the profession such as Yasuo Higa, Takashi Ishi- mine, Koshichi Taira, and Kenshichi Hira- shiki, has tried to enclose these figures and their work in a sort of cliché. Sayaka Uehara's case is not quite as blatant as those of these other photographers, but she nonetheless un- doubtedly feels troubled by the proliferation of mass-produced and deformed images of Okinawa in the post "reversion" era. In con- trast to the dark and heavy "Okinawa as an issue" mentality of the previous generation, these new images are created from a brightly colored touristic perspective that has been solidified as the symbolic and mass image of Okinawa and could be said to be a political variant of the aforementioned gaze.

The other is the paradoxical experience of being drawn back to Okinawa precisely because one has left. This is what drove Uehara to create The Others. This drive produced the urge to present an Okinawa that differs from the rhetorical Okinawa, which led Uehara to uncover the discovery of diffracted and plu- ralized "color" and the day-to-day continuous flow of "time." ［...]

It also differs slightly from what Sho- mei Tomatsu once referred to as "light that surrounds even the shadows" in The Shining Wind: Okinawa. Rather than dividing light and shadow, Uehara contours the space between light and shadow, weaving shadows with- in light and light within shadows, and it is precisely this class of New Color that marks a new page in the history of Okinawan photography.［...]

It would not be far from the point to say that in Sleeping Trees the photos are akin to drawing tools used to touch up and improve upon the succession of the stories of the previous gen- eration. The murmuring and twinkling in the foundation of several elements such as "mem- ory," "history," and "experience" are translat- ed into poetry of the lens, as if the white lead tree that took root in this land and flourished overabundantly over a long period of time has transformed into a "sleeping tree" at the end of its overgrowth. ［...]

It is not a bare drawing like that which ties together light to shadow, object to object, color to color, or here to yonder, but rather a storytelling method that composes itself into causality from quietly permeating shadowy images. There is an insight that ten- derly forms images from the remnants and afterglows crossing over the interior of the landscape. It is in the "here" and "now" and invites you to go along "somewhere."

Sleeping Trees reminds us that photography is a medium that weaves sorrow and loneli- ness, and also that photographs represent a journey. Sayaka Uehara's New Color poetics expressed through street optics, which fine- tune the "in-between" of subtropical light and color, will bring a fresh and new experi- ence to the viewpoints of those who explore the pages of this photo book."

Exracted from the text 

"Street Poetics ----The Ideology of a National Loneliness though New Color Photography"

 Isao Nakazato

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Related Exhibiton

上原沙也加「眠る木」  会期：2022年12月13日（火）～12月26日（月） 時間：10:30～18:30（最終日15時まで、日休み） 会場：ニコンサロン（東京都新宿区西新宿1-6-1 新宿エルタワー28F） 【トークイベント】 「見えるものと見ることができないもの」 出演：上原沙也加 × 柴崎友香 × 北野謙  日時：2022年12月17日（土）16:00～ 定員：20名（先着順）、参加無料 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 上原沙也加「眠る木」 会期：2022年12月3日(土)～12月29日(木) 時間：13:00〜19:00（無休） 会場： Foto Space Reago（沖縄県那覇市牧志2-7-18-3F） 入場：500円 【トークイベント１】 「写真を編むこと」  出演：上原沙也加、仲里効（映像批評家）、姫野希美（赤々舎）、髙橋健太郎（写真家） 日時：12月18日（日）17:00〜 入場：1,000 円 ※オンライン配信あり 【トークイベント２】 「沖縄 で／から 語ること」 出演：上原沙也加、オーガニックゆうき（小説家）、福地リコ（映画監督）、元山仁士郎（アクティビスト・ 研究者）、安里琉太（俳人）、林立騎（翻訳家） 日時：12月24日（土） 16:00〜 入場：1,000 円 ※オンライン配信あり

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Artist Information 

上原沙也加 

1993年沖縄県生まれ。写真家。2016年、東京造形大学卒業。同年、消費の対象として作り上げられた「沖縄」の記号的解釈による既存のイメージではなく、誰かの生活の延長線上にある地続きの場としての沖縄の日常の風景を捉えようとしたシリーズ「白い季節」を発表。2019年、写真プロジェクト「沖縄写真タイフーン〈北から 南から〉」に選ばれ、東京・沖縄の二会場にて展覧会「The Others」を開催(キヤノンオープンギャラリー 1、INTERFACE - Shomei Tomatsu Lab.)。風景のなかに立ち現れる記憶や傷跡、場所が保持している時間の層の断面を捉えようと試みる一連の写真を展示した。 2020年、同作で第36回写真の町 東川賞新人作家賞受賞。2021年、 シリーズの続篇となる「The Others 2020-2021」展を開催 （IG Photo Gallery）。

Sayaka Uehara

Born in Okinawa in 1993. Graduated from Tokyo Zokei University in 2016. Received Zokei Award 2015 for her graduation work "White Season" in which she tried to capture Okinawan everyday scenery as an extension of someone's life, not the existing Okinawa image by symbolic interpretation as something to be consumed. Went back to Okinawa and continued shooting after graduation.In 2019, Chosen to "Okinawa Photography Typhoon: From North From South", project to discover and present young photographers by PHOTONESIA OKINAWA, and  she had an exhibition "The Others" both in Okinawa and Tokyo (Canon Open Gallery1, INTERFACE-Shomei Tomatsu Lab.,). The exhibition projected the moments that accidentally touched someone's time in familiar landscape and the history and problems of Okinawa lying in even very small living spaces, which including memories and scars appear in landscape, as well as a cross-section of the layers of time that a place holds. In 2020, she won The 36th Higashikawa Awards for The New Photographer for the same work, and in 2021, she held the exhibition "The Others 2020-2021," a continuation of the series (IG Photo Gallery).

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石川竜一『zk』       Book Design：町口覚       発行：赤々舎   Size： H325mm × W262mm   Page：208 pages   Binding：Hardcover   Published in December 2022   ISBN：978-4-86541-160-7	¥ 6,000＋tax  国内送料無料！ 【国内／Domestic Shipping】  お支払い方法は、銀行振込、郵便振替、 クレジットカード支払い、PayPal、PayPay よりお選び頂けます。 【海外／International Shipping】 ＊ Please choose your area from the two below    　　　 Book + Asia shipping ¥11,150 JPY Book + World shipping ¥13,750 JPY

zk 

Ryuichi Ishikawa

"zk" is a coded symbol for a spectacular view (zekkei in Japanese), and for the surge of emotion that floods the entire body, via the sense of sight, when we encounter certain amorphous views. It signifies the relationship between landscape and emotion, between outside and inside. The feelings that emerge the moment the view is seen, the body's reaction to the camera's shutter release, the thought process of interpreting them, the self which encompasses all that has occurred up to the present moment. Symbols are culture. Culture is the collective. The collective is movement. Movement is existence. Existence is will. Will is the exterior of everything. All things exist, not for the purpose of someone or something in particular. The world is both outside and inside. It is only being that connects everything, and being overlaps with nothingness. Overlapping, fluctuation, entanglement. Go beyond "meaning." Simply exist as part of the world that is.

People cannot help being born and cannot help dying. To live means to accept that helplessness. All unnameable things cast their shadows under the light of the world. No one can see the world as it is, we can only ceaselessly trace its shadows. We are simply driven by emotions, and while we may be able to think about things, we can never truly know anything about them. There is certainly no way to know where we ourselves are headed.

Where is the boundary between outer surface and interior? Where do the concrete and the abstract connect? Objects, as we see them, are not absolute. To see objects is to see the relationship between them, it is simply a state of flowing energy. The world appears to be saturated with objects and information, but even blank spaces only exist in relation to objects, and all the while, the world is filled with energy and bound by relationships.

There are things that photographs cannot capture, too. Still, they enable us to engage with and interpret things to which it is difficult to give form. A photograph is nothing but a photograph, and for us similarly to be nothing other than what we are, the best we can hope for is to face what is occurring in front of us and around us, to stop adopting an aloof or defiant attitude, to abandon the idea that we are unconcerned and uninvolved. So many things are sad, so many things are painful, that's why I hate a world like this. That's why even if I have to grapple with these things, struggle, feel like I'm about to be crushed, I like and admire people who can simply be happy to be alive, even if there is no meaning to it. And as time goes by, as it always does, I long for the past that must have been, look ahead to the future that is still unknown, and simply look at what is in front of me. At the people who are always with me, the people who have left my life, the people I only encountered briefly. At the misery, the emptiness, the isolation of wandering lost in a concrete jungle. Because otherwise, all connections would be broken.

A spectacular view is an idea. To me, a spectacular view is whatever one sees when living life with eyes wide open, looking straight ahead.

In editing this photo book, I was thoroughly confronted with and inevitably reminded of where I am at the moment. Ah, this is how I see the world. This is how I live my life. Did I will myself to be this way, and if so, how did I become the way I am? Did I just click-click the camera shutter as if nodding my head for a brief instant? Am I that empty and hollow? If so, how do I really want things to be?

Just before I had finalized the layout of the book, I awoke from a dream in which my father had killed me, and was surprised to find tears streaming down my cheeks. The emotion that lingered was not fear, but a kind of loneliness bordering on insanity, or the nostalgic sense of being left behind in a void.

Suddenly, the Miyaji family cat appears from under the table and curls up on the keyboard on which I am writing this. "654eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"...

How can I see you from here?

（from the text "zk" by Ryuichi Ishikawa）

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Related Exhibiton

石川竜一「zk」  会期：2022年12月8日（木） 〜12月27日（火） 会期延長 2023年1月5日（木）〜1月31日（火） 時間：13:00〜20:00（土日 11:00〜19:00、水休み） 会場：PURPLE（京都市中京区式阿弥町122-1 3F） 入場料: 500円 【トークイベント】「zk」をめぐって 石川竜一 × ダニエル・アビー（写真研究者） 日時：12月11日（日）15:00〜 会場：PURPLE  ＋オンライン配信（instagram： @purple_kyoto） 【トークイベント】「zk」をめぐって2 石川竜一 × 木村絵理子（横浜美術館・主任学芸員／ヨコハマトリエンナーレ学芸統括） 日時：12月25日（日）15:00〜 会場：PURPLE  ＋オンライン配信（instagram： @purple_kyoto）

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Artist Information 

石川 竜一 

1984年沖縄県生まれ。2010年、写真家 勇崎哲史に師事。2011年、東松照明デジタル写真ワークショップに参加。2012年「okinawan portraits」で第35回写真新世紀佳作受賞。2015年、第40回木村伊兵衛写真賞、日本写真協会賞新人賞受賞。 主な個展に2014年「RYUICHI ISHIKAWA」gallery ラファイエット（沖縄）、「zkop」アツコバルー（東京）、「okinawan portraits」Place M（東京）、2015年「okinawan portraits」The Third Gallery Aya（大阪）、「A Grand Polyphony」Galerie Nord（パリ）、2016年、「okinawan portraits 2012-2016」Art Gallery Artium（福岡）、「考えたときには、もう目の前にはない」横浜市民ギャラリーあざみ野、2017年「OUTREMER/群青」アツコバルー（東京）2018年「zkop: a blessing in disguise」Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix（ロンドン）、2019年「home work」The Third Gallery Aya（大阪）、2021年「いのちのうちがわ」SAI（東京）、2022年「RECORDry」BD Gallry（名古屋）など。 主なグループ展に2016年「六本木クロッシング2016展：僕の身体、あなたの声」森美術館（東京）、「Body/Play/Politics」横浜美術館（神奈川）、2017年「日産アートアワード2017：ファイナリスト5名による新作展」BankART Studio NYK（神奈川）、2019年 「Oh！マツリ★ゴト 昭和・平成のヒーロー&ピーポー」兵庫県立美術館（兵庫）「作家と現在 ARTISTS TODAY」沖縄県立博物館・美術館（沖縄）、「Reborn-Art Festival」石巻（宮城）、2022年「国際芸術祭 あいち2022」常滑（愛知）など。 主な写真集に『okinawan portraits 2010-2012』『絶景のポリフォニー』『adrenamix』、『okinawan portraits 2012-2016』、『いのちのうちがわ』（いずれも赤々舎）、『CAMP』（SLANT）。 

Ryuichi Ishikawa

Born in Okinawa in 1984. In 2010 he studied under photographer Testushi Yuzaki. In 2011 he participated in the Shomei Tomatsu Digital Photography Workshop. He received the 35th New Cosmos of Photography Honorable Mention for "okinawan portraits" in 2012. In 2015, he received the 40th Kimura Ihei Photography Award and the Photographic Society of Japan Newcomer's Award.

Major solo exhibitions include, 2014 "RYUICHI ISHIKAWA" gallery Lafayette (Okinawa), "zkop" Atsukobarouh (Tokyo), "okinawan portraits" Place M (Tokyo), "A Grand Polyphony" Ginza Nikon Salon (2015 Osaka Nikon Salon); 2015 "okinawan portraits" The Third Gallery Aya (Osaka), "A Grand Polyphony" Galerie Nord (Paris); 2016, "okinawan portraits 2012-2016" Art Gallery Artium (Fukuoka), "Once thinking, nothing before eyes" Yokohama Civic Gallery Azamino(Yokohama); 2017 "OUTREMER / Ultramarine" Atsukobarouh (Tokyo); 2018 "zkop: a blessing in disguise" Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix(London); 2019 "home work"The Third Gallery Aya(Osaka); 2021 "The Inside of Life" SAI(Tokyo); 2022 "RECORDry"(Nagoya) etc.

Major group exhibitions include 2016 "Roppongi Crossing :My Body, Your Voice" Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), "Body / Play / Politics" Yokohama Museum of Art (Kanagawa); 2017 "Nissan Art Award 2017" BankART Studio NYK (Kanagawa); 2019 "Oh! Matsuri ★ Goto Showa / Heisei Heroes and People in the Japanese Contemporary Art" Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art (Hyogo) ; 2019 "ARTISTS TODAY" Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum(okinawa) "Reborn-Art Festival" Ishinomaki (Miyagi); 2022 "Aichi Triennale" Tokoname(Aichi) etc.

Photo books include, "Okinawan portraits 2010-2012", "A Grand Polyphony", "adrenamix", "okinawan portraits 2012-2016","The Inside of Life" (all published by AKAAKA Art Publishing, Inc.), and "CAMP" (published by SLANT).

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金サジ『物語』       Book Design：佐々木暁       発行：赤々舎   Size： H320mm × W257mm   Page：120 pages   Binding：Hardcover(codex)   Published in December 2022   ISBN：978-4-86541-161-4	¥ 5,500＋tax  国内送料無料！ 【国内／Domestic Shipping】  お支払い方法は、銀行振込、郵便振替、 クレジットカード支払い、PayPal、PayPay よりお選び頂けます。 【海外／International Shipping】 ＊ Please choose your area from the two below    　　　 Book + Asia shipping ¥9,700 JPY Book + World shipping ¥11,650 JPY

Story  이야기

Kim Sajik  김사직

"In Story, Kim Sajik takes us on a mythical journey through the soul. Like the androgynous child muse figure whose gaze meets ours at the beginning and end of this collection of photographs, it is as if the artist herself is a trickster who stands at the edge of another dimension and beckons us in. In the mythology of all world cultures, a trickster is a figure who can cross boundaries and travel between dimensions. Here, she bends the rules and the established order of dominant narratives in order to dive deeply into important questions about identity, hybridity, gender, and existence.

As a third-generation Korean immigrant to Japan (Zainichi Korean), Kim uses her art to address the intersecting traumas of colonialism, war, cultural displacement, and subjugation. This is an alternate dream universe, inflected with the "stories" of intergenerational wisdom and experience passed from mothers to daughters, through waves of Korean migration to Japan; yet it is also a surreal and often playful depiction of universal themes that speak to the shared, global human experience of survival and resilience in the face of unspeakable violence. Though there are obvious hints of Korean iconography in her work, her imagery is in fact an elaborately imagined cosmos of hybridity hewn from the visions of her dreams. Even the clothing and adornments worn by the figures in these images are neither traditionally "Korean" nor belong to any ethnic group; they are entirely the creation of the artist. Like the collective unconscious about which Jung wrote extensively, there is an archetypal nature to these images that traces the mysteries of birth, life, light, darkness, death, and rebirth. But in some ways, Story is a self-portrait of the artist herself, a personal dream world in which pine trees speak of omens and earthquakes are the outcome of the earth and the sky making love.

In this other dimension, our earth has emerged from a violent disturbance in the proverbial timeless cosmic cycle of egg versus chicken. The world has spilled from the neck of this decapitated chicken, and the land, puckered with inflamed wounds, is a vast lava field, bleeding like exposed viscera. A great eternal pine tree towers over this planet, her branches resembling human limbs and bones, passing wisdom from generation to generation, auspicious pinecones exploding and spawning, planting seeds for more life. Animal and plant deities guard over this abundant planet. A womb, hewn of bark and feathers, comes into view--merging of sky and earth. Two female twins are born to a woman who prays for children deep in a forest. They are blessed by sanshin harumoni, the grandmotherly guardian goddesses of childbirth, and watched over by natural spirits, but also haunted by evil ogres. In two mirror-image self-portraits of the artist, we watch how these twins each grow up into young women whose worlds contradict--torn apart by the colonial violence of patriarchal power on one hand and the maternal, primordial forces of nature on the other. Citing Renaissance-era paintings of the biblical battle between Cain and Abel, the artist portrays the brutal struggle between these sisters as a representation of her own intergenerational identity struggle between Korea and Japan [...]

Yet, this mythical journey leads beyond death and towards rebirth, through song and celebration, through rituals of new beginnings. For the artist, the boat that carries the soul to another realm is not just a vehicle but a companion who walks with the dead. And from the shells of myriad cicadas, a lotus flower breaks through the surface, in an allusion to the endless Buddhist cycle of samsara.  [...]

Inspired not only by traveling and encountering fairy tales passed down from elders, many of these scenes were imagined from Kim's own sense of embodied knowledge gleaned from rehearsing traditional Korean dances that have been reinterpreted by successive generations of Zainichi Korean immigrant communities in Japan. She celebrates the body in all its rawness, honoring women's bodies' deep links to land and nature, as agents of creation. As a dancer, she recuperates in her own body the memory of previous generations while also embracing the shifts, ruptures, and transformations that have come about through trauma and contradictory contexts. Her photographs, many of which are self-portraits of her own body, celebrate the complexity of these postcolonial identities, not shying away from the brutal wounds of war and colonial subjugation, and the ensuing sense of disorientation and displacement. [...]

Emphasizing the power of women, the male protagonists who appear in Story are faceless, with the exception of those who are dead or social outcasts. The figure of the man who has beheaded the cosmic chicken, the holy man who imposes his religion, the groom who marries one of the twins, the invading colonist who sits proudly with his rifle upon the skin of a slain tiger--each of these characters and many others have their faces obscured from view. Most conventional nationalistic histories around the world, especially those of colonization and war, highlight only the names and faces of male heroes. By exposing the struggles and contributions of women, Kim reverses this erasure and calls attention to matrilineal heritage and continuity. She also shows how in many ways, the patriarchal violence carried out by men--such as Japanese imperial military atrocities and harsh, racist colonial rule--was often carried out by "faceless" actors who were never held accountable for their crimes. Rather than blame all men for these traumatic trespasses, Kim shows how the ideology of gender itself can result in the perpetuation of harm. [...]

Story is a ceremonial dimension that attempts to soothe the wounds of colonialism and recuperate stolen memories and roots. As Kim Sajik herself points out, rituals are liminal moments when unexpected, even absurd events take place, and yet we fully accept these otherworldly experiences without even really understanding what has just taken place. Shamanistic rituals often entail puzzling, enigmatic elements that remove us from our everyday realities and allow us to think in new and refreshing ways. By invoking the magical space of ritual and shamanism, the artist thus infuses fresh "trickster energy" into the painful, heavy memories borne by the Korean diaspora of Japan, lighting up the darkness, reclaiming history, and opening up new possibilities for healing."

Extracted from the text "Tricksters and Trauma"　

 Greg Dvorakr　

（Professor of Pacific and Asian history and gender studies, Waseda University）

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Artist Information 

金サジ 

自身のコリアンディアスポラの身体的、精神的アイデンティティの「揺らぎ」をきっかけとして活動をはじめる。創作物語を演出写真の技法を用いて作品を制作。写真家として活動しながら、活動の一環として、韓国舞踊家、金一志の下に師事。韓国伝統芸能を学びながら、ディアスポラに代々継承されていく歴史・民族精神のトラウマから生まれる新たな可能性を探っている。現在、ロシアのサハリンのリサーチを日本サハリン協会等の協力を得ながら継続中。2020年度より多様なメンバーと映像作品「AMA~ウィルスとおよぐ~」を完成に向けて奮闘制作中。2016年度キヤノン写真新世紀グランプリ、令和3年度京都府文化賞奨励賞受賞。

Kim Sajik

Born in Kyoto. The swaying her own Korean diaspora's physical and mental identity have driven her to work. she creates works using the technique of staged photography of her creative narratives.  As part of artist's activities, she studied under the Korean Butoh dancer, Kim Iru Chi. While studying traditional Korean performing arts, she is exploring new possibilities that arise from the trauma of historical and ethnic spirituality passed down from generation to generation in the diaspora.she recived the Grand Prize in 2016 Canon's New Cosmos of Photography competition and 2021Kyoto Prefecture Cultural Prize,Encouragement Award.

2014 "Busan Biennale 2014 Special Exhibition Asian Curatorial" (Busan,Korea)

2016 "Art Court Frontier 2016 #14", Art court gallery (Osaka,Japan)

2017 "the Night of a Full Moon, a Man Builds a Grave and a Woman Eats Pinecones." TOKYO PHOTOGRAPHIC ART MUSEUM (Tokyo,Japan)

2017 "showcase #6 "Storytelling" curated by minoru shimizu" eN arts (Kyoto,Japan)

2017 "Ascending Art Annual Vol.1「Shapes and Figures」"Spiral(Tokyo,Japan),WACOAL STUDYHALL (Kyoto,Japan)