Our group “Buddha” visited a gallery in Shinjuku,
Tokyo. The gallery, Nikon Salon bis Shinjuku, is located in the 28th
floor of Shinjuku L tower, where you can view the city of Tokyo from
high-leveled position. This gallery is rented for the photographer to set a
gallery and the show has been changed off every weeks.
A show by Kenji Haga was held between July 14th
and 20th. The title: (季節は巡る), Kisetsuha Meguru, means seasons go around. Kenji Haga, loves to
take photos of scenery and landscape. The
space provided for the show had four walls. Fortunately, we got to meet the
photographer at the gallery and he was kind enough to let us have an interview with him and let us know something
interesting.
He took these photographs from Hokkaido to
Ishigakijima. He
loves the cycle of the seasons and makes the round to take photographs of it in
Japan. He favors all his photographs equally; therefore all his displayed
photographs are the same size. He classified the photographs into the four
seasons in Japan: spring, summer, fall, and winter. He displayed the pictures
of spring in one walls, summer in other wall, and so on. Since fall is his
favorite season of all, he used the wall with the biggest space for that season. Kenji Haga’s
photography shows the Japanese four seasons, for example, “Fall Flows”
expresses the beauty of fallen leaves and the murmur of a stream.
Among the photograph taken in fall, morning and early evening are the best
timing to take pictures for Kenji. He said, “I love to take photograph of
mornings and late evenings because these times have many different shades of
colors. Every one seconds, the scenery changes I really enjoy shooting that
moment.” As I can understand his word, there were lots of photograph of
sunrises and sunsets in the show. Kenji has several points that he really wants
to care about when holding a show. One is that he doesn’t only display
photographs, he also hang a boards with poems on them, written about seasons,
his children, and feelings in daily life. The poems are not directly related to
the artworks that are displayed with, but together they help to make the style of
the show. . Since the accident of the Nuclear Power Plants in Fukushima, he
cannot use spotlights as he likes. Finally, is the background music. When we
visited the show “Silk road” by Kitaro(喜多郎), a famous Japanese
musician, was being played. Kenji is being particular of making the atmosphere
of the show comfortable and quiet.
I became interested in how he valued atmosphere in the gallery. I thought it was good idea to display the poems with the photograph because viewers can get his message from the poem. I'd like to see his work.
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