shashasha

“Returning from Osaka just after the new year, I was once again drawn into the whirlpool of energy in Tokyo. As I prepared for a trip in August, plans to publish this photobook were finalized and my goal became clearer than ever.

The joy of meetings, the sorrow of partings - everything provides us with a reason for living. Photographs support and document this. The work that we are burdened with brings us happiness and harm. With my photographs, I hope to lighten people’s loa and free them, if only for an instant. When I meet someone, this is how I want to be as a person and how I want my photographs to be. It is also what I expect of those I am involved with, photography, and other expressions.

When my body, with crimson red coursing through it, stops before the light, and my heart throbs in my chest, the ceaseless flow of time is imprinted on my eyes

Every photograph is an illusion. Until we meet…”

• Ikuro Suzuki excerpt from Gegou

Born in Shizuoka, Japan in 1985, Ikuro Suzuki began taking photographs when he was 21 years old. Having won the New Cosmos of Photography Grand Prize in 2013 for his work CONTREQUIEM, Suzuki has been self publishing his work in limited editions of 3-6 copies. Working with AKAAKA publishers, Susuki’s _Gegou _marks the first publication of a project which will see him publish a photoboook every month for a year. Published by the Tokyo based imprint Ikuro Suzuki’s first photobook within this project captures both the momentary and lasting encounters within his everyday. Making his living as a steeplejack and photographing the people and places which surround him, Gegou is a reflection on our encounters, our meetings and farewells and the spaces in which we fill from time to time captured in a photograph and kept within as a memory.