shashasha

A quick glance through the more than 500 images in “Eyes on the Move 1990-2023” reveals that there is a certain inexplicable quality to Izuru Takeya's photographs. Taken all over Japan over more than thirty years, Takeya's photographs vary in subject, style, tone, mood, and immediacy. Leaving aside the question of whether his photographs are a by-product of his nomadic lifestyle, or whether his life as a vagabond is in the service of his photographs, his sense of wonder, his relentless interest in the world, and his sensitivity to the photographic translate directly into his images, as if his photographs create beauty rather than capture it.
The book concludes with texts (in Japanese & English) by Japanese scholar Lucy Fleming-Brown and curator Chuhei Fujita, and an afterword by Izuru Takeya.

“Whilst Takeya might wander Japan alone, these are not pictures freighted with a sense of loneliness. In place of the exchanges that develop normative status in a static society and come to govern the routine of our lives is a subtle play of interactions, as Takeya negotiates each place on its own terms. Whether he encounters elemental phenomena such as rock formations, a fleeting constellation of shadows, or the spontaneous moment in which a passerby crosses his path, Takeya’s photographic impulse is not stimulated by any desire beyond engaging with the scene as it is in that moment.”
― from Lucy Fleming- Brown’s “Encounters with a Private Landscape”