The identities of places can be understood by the activities which are found there. I strive to define these identities by observing and documenting the ambiguous relationships objects have with places. My work focuses on the residual information which people and history imprint on environments. The information I photograph is often open-ended which is most of the time the way I encounter it. The photographs which result are a means of analyzing space by observing the composition of objects juxtaposed alongside their functional and aesthetic properties in order to better understand the notion of human activity upon any given location.
Mexican Train - Archival photo paper, 110x 125~190cm 2014~ongoing
Mexican Train is a kind of photo-editing game in which I experiment with different types of spatial editing. Photos are connected through multi-layered correspondences. Mexican Train evolves into the rhizomatic body of work, in which connections are established by the rule of association and continuation, for example, lines (oddly figures can be made), material correspondences or other conditions, regardless of time or geographic specifics.
Standbeelden in Nederland - This series, which grow into a book, focuses on statues all across The Netherlands, depicting famous and lesser-known historical figures. Whereas nowadays voices to tear down certain statues grow stronger, I want to shift the lens to emphasise the sculptural and architectural beauty of these artworks, and the way they are situated in the landscape or cityscape. Photography is a perfect medium to ‘animate’ these fascinating objects.
City Plants - Archival pigment print 2020
Series of an ongoing project of found plants from the streets.
Street Discipline - Pigment Archival Print 125 x 125cm 2014
This series contains the footages of someone who left their signatures in the streets without their intentions.
Carefreeness - Archival pigment print 2018
A Scottish myth, portraits of trees and the existence based on non-existence. The series was supported by the PS camera project and the camera generously gave a loan from the Shinkichi Tajiri Estate.
Patch Work - Ongoing project 2013~ Pigment archival print
Street patchworks of all kinds tell the story of worn-out backgrounds.
Neonless - As for many Japanese ex-pats, the spring of 2011 was a time of worry and detachment. I struggled to comprehend what effect the Fukushima nuclear disaster had had on my homeland. News reports arriving by the day/hour/minute carried ever more alarming scenarios: would windblown radioactivity mean that Tokyo would need to be evacuated?
The following year, I made my first trip back. Travelling through familiar neighbourhoods, I noticed a subtle change. Convenience stores, restaurants, city lights didn’t sparkle quite as much as they used to. I remembered that I’d read that there’d been a push by the government for everyone to use less electricity and realized this was the effect. I began to think about how I might document this.
For me, one of the most striking examples of this was with the gigantic pachinko parlours that line many of Japan’s busy state roads. While still lit up like Las Vegas well into the night, they were now turning their lights out once they locked their doors. I started exploring the landscape in late nights and early mornings, in search of these darkened lights shows.
I loved this contradiction as it related to photography, a process that by its very nature requires light to create images. What emerged in the pictures were buildings that while intensely familiar to me were now strange and alien. Previously hidden by thousands upon thousands of light bulbs, they now looked as though they’d come from the bottom of the sea, like a sort of Atlantis that had been dropped into these familiar surroundings.
In the end, what I was pursuing was a way to reveal these forms through the absence of light, to make photographs of the darkness itself.
Parabolic Duties - Pigment archival print 125 x 100cm 2010 Ex-pats living in the Netherlands often live in transitory circumstances. private belongings end up in office environments while apartments remain minimally furnished. the boundaries between work and domicile are blurred. The series supported by Free Spaces AIR / The Virtueel Museum Zuidas foundation Amsterdam Collection of Virtual Zoom / FOAM photography museum Amsterdam Shortlisted in the Raymond Weil photography competition 2010, Geneva
Amsterdam Irregulars - Mixed media 2014~2017
Amsterdam Irregulars embodies a bizarre pilgrimage into an unchartered world of ordinary people, the spaces they inhabit, and the passions and secrets they lie with each night.
This blog project is a collaboration between photographers Shinji Otani and Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk, and writer Christopher McIntosh.
Pioneering a distinctive form of “anti-journalism”, they explore the seamless web of interconnectivity that humans share with their intimate surroundings.
Exhibitions combine a series of off-the-wall installations, impromptu poetry readings and selected panel discussions.
The Country of the Rising Sun - Gelatin silver print 40 x 50cm, Series of 66 photographs 2007/ 2014
The Country of the Rising Sun is my first mature photographic body of work, made during three winter visits to Stockholm. The focus lies on strong lighting situations during a Scandinavian winter. The black and white photographs are taken in Swedish suburban neighbourhoods resonating strikingly with suburbs found elsewhere. Suburbia, for all its site-specific peculiarities, is paradoxically a zone of universal déjà vu. The publication was the winner of the first Unseen Amsterdam Dummy Award, published by Lecturis in 2013. The series was re-edited in 2014 for exhibition purposes.
Part of this series are in the Collection Neuflize OBC, Paris
