I visited a photo exhibition by Yoshitomo Nara. The venue is Taka Ishii Gallery Photography/Film in Roppongi.
The show’s title is on the long side: “Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone―Take your time, it won’t be long now.” Although the photos on display were taken over roughly five years between 2014 and 2018, the title mentions “16.” Hmm, a mystery.
The show is laid out with “42 x 56cm” photographs lined up flat on the walls, alongside photographs packed tightly across the surface of tables.
Nara, who has been shooting photographs since even before he started painting, captures his subjects with a startlingly natural sense of relationship — the photos feel like a direct transfer of his own pure character.
On the tables, a wide range of images — portraits, landscapes, still lifes, photos of his own works — were arranged neatly, and even amid all that variety there was an unmistakable sense of unity.
You can savor each photo slowly, one by one, and it has a flavor quite different from his drawings.
The photos cropped square, Instagram-style, feel like social-media posts, delivering vivid glimpses of Nara’s daily life.
The three large tables each held an installation sealing in 55 photographs, and were on view for sale. The price per table is 9.6 million yen. From the recent drawing show I feel I already understand the general price range.
I bought the photo book that gathers together works, including some not on view. It too is bound in a square format. It is a truly wonderful photo book — full of flavor, and looking through it makes me feel happy.
