shashasha

The first book by Japanese artist Yosuke Bandai

Visually and haptically, “A Certain Collector B” lets the reader imagine holding a private, hand-made album indexing the anonymous B’s collection. Bandai – a multidisciplinary artist whose practice also involves photography – created the images in the book using materials and objects (waste and refuse, metal parts, sticks, stones, organic parts) gathered at night from illegal dumping sites in forests or roadsides. The items, most are in some state of decay, are placed on a flatbed scanner and photographed, recreating and transforming the discarded items into new forms and shapes that seem as if floating in mid-air, devoid of all three-dimensionality and depth.

“Sometimes when I’m working with a particularly exciting vestigial remain and feeling like a kid in a candy store, I reach a transfixed, trancelike state, where I gradually become one with the subject material. At other times when I feel an even deeper, almost love-like attachment to a subject, there are moments when I reach an impasse, and debating the next move experience a harmonious flash of the full range of emotions …
“The photobook’s premise is that a character identified as ‘B’ collected these images of trash, and then someone else stepped in to subsequently reproduce the album as a consumable commercial product. In a sense, I wanted to try and bring this scenario to fruition, motivated by a sense of playfulness and also a dose of cynicism.” — from an interview with Yosuke Bandai