奥山由之『windows』       Book Design：葛西薫、安達祐貴      発行：赤々舎   Size： H194mm × W205mm   Page：752 pages   Binding：Cloth hardcover   Published in June 2023    ISBN：978-4-86541-171-3	¥ 10,000＋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 ¥15,150 JPY Book + World shipping ¥17,750 JPY

windows

Yoshiyuki Okuyama

From as far back as I can remember, whenever I went for a walk I would look at the windows of homes and always enjoy imagining what it was like living there, what kind of people lived there, how did they feel in living their everyday life.

Although window glass separates inside from outside, for me it was like a screen that connected me for a fleeting moment with someone whose appearance was not visible.

During the time I had a lot of opportunities to visit mainly America and European countries either for work or just travel, I would look at windows as was my custom and I could see a dining room or living room through the clear glass and observe, a little self-consciously, the interior of the room and its furnishings.

In 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic made it impossible to go overseas, I started walking around Tokyo and suddenly realized how few times I was able to see the interior of a home. I hadn't noticed until then, but many of the windows seen in Tokyo are not transparent but types called frosted or figured glass. It was obvious to me that this reflected a concern for privacy that was greater than in America and European countries. Of course, clear glass is often installed when windows face a garden, or are high up on a building, or placed where people cannot see through them. But if the house is an old one with windows that face the street or the house next door, usually the windows have been made opaque by blasting them with a powdered mineral. Even many of the contemporary buildings I saw had clouded glass that appeared to be covered with a film.

Opaque glass renders abstract all sorts of everyday objects seen through it, the glass itself becomes an interior pattern that is part of the lifestyle of the people who live in the home--to me it seems like a kind of portrait that conveys not only sounds and smells but even what the people are like. From the abstract patterns that line the window frame I detect the vague expression of someone in Tokyo who I have never seen face-to-face. I even felt that opaque glass, which supposedly functions to avoid the gaze of persons nearby, serves the opposite purpose of inflating my imagination and, as a result, revealing the interior for the very reason that it acts as a veil.

Particularly during the pandemic, the fact that everyone spent much more time at home so that one's own idiosyncrasies and those of the other people living in the home became more apparent than ever before may also have an influence.［...]

Toshiyuki Horie (1964- ), an author and scholar of French literature, writes in his book Tomadou mado (Bewildered window), "Wasn't the window, while being a flat surface, inherently like a picture that manifested an invisible depth?" It is fair to say that the object that is window glass in which transmission and reflection co-exist, is a three-dimensional planar object in terms of exposing things on either side of the surface of the glass. Various objects seen through opaque glass change in appearance depending on the reflection of light at different times of the day and the sense of distance from which they are seen, going back and forth between concrete and abstract, fluctuating, even having a presence similar to a picture that leaves space to imagine the expression of someone never seen before from colors and patterns.

In that sense, you could say that the same window seen from the inside is physically completely different when seen from the outside.

As I look again at the opaque "windows" that blend in as a part of the passing days of our lives, I am amazed at the individuality in the huge variety of expressions projected on the screen and I fall gradually into the illusion that maybe it is I as the watcher who is the one being watched. It's a scary feeling that causes me to stop dead in my tracks.

What is a "window?"

We want to keep out the heat and cold and the wind and rain but let in the sunlight. The window seems to be a paradoxical product that satisfies the conflicting desires of human beings to create a pleasant indoor environment while also enjoying the benefits of the outdoors, and at the same time it serves as an interface that links individuals and society.

In the opaque windows--arguably a sort of symbol of Tokyo with its complex layers of culture and buildings crowded together--I saw the facial expressions of people.

I felt that looking at windows is tantamount to strangers looking at one another.

It is my strong and heartfelt desire that these quiet exchanges of eyes meeting eyes can become portraits of people living in the city of Tokyo.

Excerpts from the Foreword  by Yoshiyuki Okuyama

In his 2020 series "flowers," he attempted to engage in a dialogue with his late grandmother through photographing flowers, enabling the camera to respectively embody the perspectives of both himself and his grandmother. Following "flowers," "windows" is the second in a trilogy work that "attempts to depict people through non-human subjects." What underlies Okuyama's works, regardless of their incentive or purpose, is his unique visual expression that treats the contradictions and multifacetedness accompanying all phenomena as themes for production, and discerns the essence of photography in the numerous possibilities that fluctuate before and after the moment that is captured. 

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Related Exhibiton

奥山由之 「windows」 会期：2023年6月10日（土）〜 7月8日（土） 時間：12:00～19:00（日・月・祝休） 会場：amanaTIGP（東京都港区六本木5-17-1 AXISビル 2F） Print House Session x Yoshiyuki Okuyama x LAG 会期：2023年10月13日（金）〜11月11日（土） 時間：13:00〜19:00（日・月・祝休） 会場：LAG（LIVE ART GALLERY） 東京都渋谷区神宮前2-4-11 Daiwaビル1F Related articles: 奥山由之インタビュー 不透明な窓から描き出す東京のひとびと／窓研究所  奥山由之さんが東京のすりガラスの窓を10万枚も撮ってわかったこと（全5回）／ほぼ日  奥山由之「windows」ガラス窓隔て「会話」を感じる／朝日新聞、好書好日

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Artist Information 

奥山由之 

1991年東京生まれ。
第34回写真新世紀優秀賞受賞。第47回講談社出版文化賞写真賞受賞。
主な写真集に、『flowers』(赤々舎)、『As the Call, So the Echo』(赤々舎)、『BEST BEFORE』（青幻舎）、『POCARI SWEAT』(青幻舎)、『BACON ICE CREAM』(PARCO出版)、『Girl』(PLANCTON)、『君の住む街』(SPACE SHOWER BOOKS）、『Los Angeles / San Francisco』(Union publishing)、『The Good Side』(Editions Bessard)、『Ton! Tan! Pan! Don!』(bookshop M)、台湾版『BACON ICE CREAM』(原點出版)、などがある。
主な展覧会は、「As the Call, So the Echo」Gallery916、「BACON ICE CREAM」パルコミュージアム、「君の住む街」 表参道ヒルズ スペースオー、「白い光」キヤノンギャラリーS、「flowers」PARCO MUSEUM TOKYO、「THE NEW STORY」POST など。

Yoshiyuki Okuyama

Born in 1991 in Tokyo. 
He received the Canon New Cosmos of Photography Excellence Award in 2011 and the Kodansha Publishing Culture Award in Photography in 2016.
Published photo collections include flowers (Akaaka Art Publishing), As the Call, So the Echo (Akaaka Art Publishing), BEST BEFORE (Seigensha)、POCARI SWEAT (Seigensha), BACON ICE CREAM (Parco Publishing; Taiwanese edition, Uni-Books), Girl (Plancton), Kimi no sumu machi (The Town You Live In; Space Shower Books), Los Angeles / San Francisco (Union Publishing), The Good Side (Editions Bessard), and Ton! Tan! Pan! Don! (bookshop M); 

Major exhibitions in Tokyo, As the Call, So the Echo (Gallery916), Bacon Ice Cream (Parco Museum), Kimi no sumu machi (Omotesando Hills Space O), White Light (Canon Gallery S), flowers (Parco Museum Tokyo), and The New Story (Post).

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Related Items

奥山由之 『windows』（特別限定版）	奥山由之 『flowers』	奥山由之 『As the Call, So the Echo』 （Out of stock)

奥山由之『windows』（特別限定版）   Special Edition, Limited 500, Signed      Book Design：葛西薫、安達祐貴      発行：赤々舎   Size： H194mm × W205mm   Page：752 pages   Binding：Cloth hardcover   Published in June 2023    ISBN：978-4-86541-172-0	¥ 18,000＋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 ¥23,150 JPY Book + World shipping ¥25,750 JPY

windows

Yoshiyuki Okuyama

From as far back as I can remember, whenever I went for a walk I would look at the windows of homes and always enjoy imagining what it was like living there, what kind of people lived there, how did they feel in living their everyday life.

Although window glass separates inside from outside, for me it was like a screen that connected me for a fleeting moment with someone whose appearance was not visible.

During the time I had a lot of opportunities to visit mainly America and European countries either for work or just travel, I would look at windows as was my custom and I could see a dining room or living room through the clear glass and observe, a little self-consciously, the interior of the room and its furnishings.

In 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic made it impossible to go overseas, I started walking around Tokyo and suddenly realized how few times I was able to see the interior of a home. I hadn't noticed until then, but many of the windows seen in Tokyo are not transparent but types called frosted or figured glass. It was obvious to me that this reflected a concern for privacy that was greater than in America and European countries. Of course, clear glass is often installed when windows face a garden, or are high up on a building, or placed where people cannot see through them. But if the house is an old one with windows that face the street or the house next door, usually the windows have been made opaque by blasting them with a powdered mineral. Even many of the contemporary buildings I saw had clouded glass that appeared to be covered with a film.

Opaque glass renders abstract all sorts of everyday objects seen through it, the glass itself becomes an interior pattern that is part of the lifestyle of the people who live in the home--to me it seems like a kind of portrait that conveys not only sounds and smells but even what the people are like. From the abstract patterns that line the window frame I detect the vague expression of someone in Tokyo who I have never seen face-to-face. I even felt that opaque glass, which supposedly functions to avoid the gaze of persons nearby, serves the opposite purpose of inflating my imagination and, as a result, revealing the interior for the very reason that it acts as a veil.

Particularly during the pandemic, the fact that everyone spent much more time at home so that one's own idiosyncrasies and those of the other people living in the home became more apparent than ever before may also have an influence.［...]

Toshiyuki Horie (1964- ), an author and scholar of French literature, writes in his book Tomadou mado (Bewildered window), "Wasn't the window, while being a flat surface, inherently like a picture that manifested an invisible depth?" It is fair to say that the object that is window glass in which transmission and reflection co-exist, is a three-dimensional planar object in terms of exposing things on either side of the surface of the glass. Various objects seen through opaque glass change in appearance depending on the reflection of light at different times of the day and the sense of distance from which they are seen, going back and forth between concrete and abstract, fluctuating, even having a presence similar to a picture that leaves space to imagine the expression of someone never seen before from colors and patterns.

In that sense, you could say that the same window seen from the inside is physically completely different when seen from the outside.

As I look again at the opaque "windows" that blend in as a part of the passing days of our lives, I am amazed at the individuality in the huge variety of expressions projected on the screen and I fall gradually into the illusion that maybe it is I as the watcher who is the one being watched. It's a scary feeling that causes me to stop dead in my tracks.

What is a "window?"

We want to keep out the heat and cold and the wind and rain but let in the sunlight. The window seems to be a paradoxical product that satisfies the conflicting desires of human beings to create a pleasant indoor environment while also enjoying the benefits of the outdoors, and at the same time it serves as an interface that links individuals and society.

In the opaque windows--arguably a sort of symbol of Tokyo with its complex layers of culture and buildings crowded together--I saw the facial expressions of people.

I felt that looking at windows is tantamount to strangers looking at one another.

It is my strong and heartfelt desire that these quiet exchanges of eyes meeting eyes can become portraits of people living in the city of Tokyo.

Excerpts from the Foreword  by Yoshiyuki Okuyama

In his 2020 series "flowers," he attempted to engage in a dialogue with his late grandmother through photographing flowers, enabling the camera to respectively embody the perspectives of both himself and his grandmother. Following "flowers," "windows" is the second in a trilogy work that "attempts to depict people through non-human subjects." What underlies Okuyama's works, regardless of their incentive or purpose, is his unique visual expression that treats the contradictions and multifacetedness accompanying all phenomena as themes for production, and discerns the essence of photography in the numerous possibilities that fluctuate before and after the moment that is captured.  

谷口昌良『空を掴め ── 空像へ』      Book Design：木村稔将   Editor: Yutaka Kikutake Gallery Books      発行：赤々舎   Size： H288mm × W220mm   Page：100 pages   Binding：Cloth hardcover   Published in May 2023    ISBN：978-4-86541-170-6	¥ 3,500＋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 ¥6,400 JPY Book + World shipping ¥7,650 JPY

On Representational Emptiness

Akiyoshi Taniguchi

Kusho 空象 is a neologism coined by me made up of the characters 空 which in the Buddhist context connotes Emptiness, and 象 meaning form; shape; phenomenon. Joined together, the two-character compound means that all representations are Empty. Representations that are recognized to be "seen" or objects that are "seen things" are merely recognized by the mind as such and are not real images nor substantive. Photographs are entrusted with substance and discussed in such a manner but are in actuality, nothing more than mere virtual images. However, many of today's photographic works are overconfident in their materiality. If one hundred people see one apple, it becomes one hundred apples.

I am farsighted, and I took off my glasses and immersed myself in a blurry world to take pictures. Of course, using manual focus, I didn't know if the shot was in focus. Reflected on my retina was the scenery that only I could see, and so I tried pressing the shutter relying on my own five senses. I didn't know what I was shooting or what kind of details I saw, and yet, it felt good. When I look at the finished print at a later date, printed was "something reminiscent" of that reflection on the retina. But while that is the fact captured by the photograph, the question of what was taken is a stupid question. Such floating substances are understood in Buddhist philosophy as Impermanence. In other words, permanent substances do not exist at all.

One of the photographs in this has its appearance changed due to the human error of digital technology. The print burns as the paper (substance) turns into ash, and transforms into a jar of tears.

The main message of this series is: "representation is impermanence."

We can probably see from this analogy that everything is impermanent.

In particular, I wonder if artists continue to seek to go towards the truth that they cannot possibly grasp and therefore merely grasp Emptiness.

The representations captured by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce have a certain naiveite when taking into account the 200-year-old history of the modern technology of photography, but the wonderment born out of that naiveite is important for me. I took on this challenge with a similar perspective close to my heart. Wonderment that something has become captured in a photograph.

As the analog versus digital debate becomes less intense and with the camera industry moving forward in the trajectory that it is, perhaps it is worth reconsidering what is being accepted as a technological breakthrough. This is because with the advent of digital expression that is ever-changing the value of straight photography has been lost to the history of photography. It is at this moment that reached the end point of one "definition of photography."

I now am reminded of a major milestone in the history of photography, which began with Niépce's wonderment. And if Niépce had a digital camera today, how would he feel?

However, if Representation is Impermanence, then the aforementioned controversy may not be such a big one after all. Rather, photography will continue to expand beyond its boundaries into other mediums. At times it is a little sad that straight photography as it was in the past is being dismantled but then I remind myself that within the destiny of representation and synbolism is the expression of the persistence of the human spirit. And in this era of crossings and turning points I find myself seeking a return to Light.

Excerpts from the Afterword "Towards Kusho: Representational Emptiness" by Akiyoshi Taniguchi 

浜田涼『とぼとぼと』      Book Design：櫻井一輝      発行：赤々舎   Size： H252mm × W188mm   Page：160 pages   Binding：Hardcover   Published in May 2023    ISBN：978-4-86541-146-1	¥ 4,000＋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 ¥6,900 JPY Book + World shipping ¥8,150 JPY

tobotonoto (stroll around...)

Ryo Hamada

Ryo Hamada is an artist who, beginning in the 1990s up to the present day, explores the possibilities of what can be artistically expressed with photographs that are entirely out of focus. Because of the abstractness of this visual expression, not everyone may be able to determine, viewing her works, that "This is a photograph." More accurately, Hamada's works can be described as somewhere between a picture and a photograph. Although the works appear as halfway entities, they are all images photographed with a camera and, moreover, the artist does not rely on what is termed image processing but creates "blurred photographs" using only the functions of the camera lens. The images are undeniably photographs. But here the expectations of photographs that people have held thus far effortlessly fall away. What has fallen away? In a manner of speaking, what has fallen away is "truth." No, perhaps we should say "truth" that is gently beginning to vanish.

"This is strange, I'm not sure I understand it, but I guess I don't have to--if you can feel that way, then when there are other more complicated and abstruse things that you and the other person can't understand at all, even if you don't, as long as you feel like you kind of understand, that's pretty much enough I think."

Hamada herself does not use filters on her lenses or use image processing to transform images. She has followed her own rule, from the time she worked with film cameras, of photographing with lenses that blur the focus. Even after the transition to digital she felt that "There was no point for me personally in changing my approach then," and says she produces her photographic images without making any changes to them. 

The abstractness of Hamada's blurred photographs causes us to feel as if these pieces of someone else's daily life overlap with our own memories and experiences. I think the effect of blurring is also the possibility of access to others. When, where, and what are unclear, and yet you seem to have seen or sensed something, or perhaps you are mistaken and it is just your imagination.

Excerpts from the text "Blurred Photographs: The Artistic Expression of Ryo Hamada"

by Tetsuro Ishida (Curator, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum)