shashasha

“Between The Light and Darkness” is Yan Kallen’s sensual documentation of traditional Kyoto artisans and craftsmen and their tools and workplaces.

"With my interest in looking at the relationship between human and nature since studying the handcrafted brooms of my last project, it is only a matter-of-course that I eventually focus on artisans and raftsmen And when I received the KG+ Award from KYOTOGRAPHIE International Photography Festival in the Spring of 2016, it became an opportunity for me to realise and create a project about the artisanal scene of Kyoto, a city known for its traditions in crafts and culture.
With an open mind on what would do, I decided to move to Kyoto for 6 months, to be amongst the artisans and visit them as often as I could. It was fascinating to watch the artisans at work, making things in the traditional methods and using tools that are sometimes passed down for generations. But in the process of observing them, I slowly recognise that it is not simply a matter of livelihood, or continuation of traditions. Their artisanal culture represented a way of life, an attitude for living in this world, driven by the passion for the crafts, and to be making and to live with these artefacts […]
The title Between the Light and Darkness was chosen to describe the span of time which we call a lifetime, but also the reality of the everyday, of repetition, of days and nights and legacies, a moment in time, a photograph, a print.”
— from the artist’s afterword