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This special catalogue, published to commemorate the eponymous exhibition at the Saitama Museum of Art, contains works by all five featured artists as well as a photographic record of the exhibition itself.

Just like the exhibition itself, the “New Photographic Objects” catalogue emphasizes the materiality of their medium photography. Within the ever-accelerating development and societal diffusion of digital technologies, the included artists – Daisuke Yokota, Nerhol, Takashi Makino, Hiroshi Takizawa, Teppei Sako – continue to update the photographic language using techniques such as image processing, copying, scanning, physical manipulation, social media and various interactive methods, freeing the medium from its obsession with decisive moments.
Each artist’s work is presented as a physically separate book made with different materials, formats, bindings and dimensions, highlighting their distinct aims and forms of expression.

Teppei Sako’s “Poor, Video, Anytime God”, a series of everyday snapshots, is arranged in a long, strip-like photobook. Nerhol’s artworks made by layering dozens of printed photographs or video frames, then cutting into the material to create three-dimensional photo sculptures, are documented and examined in detail. Hiroshi Takizawa’s series of photographs shot in Berlin’s subway system are printed opposite metal sheets, with the “true” image to be glanced at in the reflection of the mirror-like surfaces. Daisuke Yokota presents the result of his manipulated images printed on see-through film, further emphasizing the relationship between memory/present and image/reality in his works. Takashi Makino’s processed images and videoworks of landscapes, natural phenomena and objects finds representation in the form of a foldout-able liporello-style book.

“New Photographic Objects” captures a cross-section of contemporary photographic art in Japan and highlights the works of five artists who aim for a radical rethinking of the medium’s forms.

The catalogue includes information about each individual artist and the exhibited works as well as essays by Itaru Oura and Shiori Sahara (all texts in Japanese only).

Daisuke Yokota
Transparent film is printed with the images from Daisuke Yokota’s installation “Untitled (Room/Reflection)” (2020) and joined with a ring binder. This allows each image to be examined individually or, like in the original installation, to be viewed all together, backlit, overlapping and difficult to discern.

Hiroshi Takizawa
This zine features five shots from Hiroshi Takizawa’s “The Scene (Berlin),” a series of images created using mirrors installed in Berlin’s subway system.
The left-hand side of each double-page spread is printed with a photograph of a mirror and the image it reflects, while the right-hand side features reflective mirror paper printed with an image obtained by hand-scanning the surface of the mirror seen in the photograph. By enabling the reader to view the photograph reflected in the mirror paper, the zine adds further depth to the intricate relationship between mirror, image and object in Takizawa’s series.

Nerhol
This zine is composed of close-up shots from Nerhol’s artworks. The 64 pages and 46 images concentrate on the fine details that reveal the materiality of Nerhol’s photographic objects: the sharp, deep cuts into the paper, the fine fluff that remains from the grinding processes, the faint scratches in the ink, and the precise patterns formed by overlapping layers.

Teppei Sako
In the spring of 2020, shortly after the state of emergency had been declared, Teppei Sako started his continuing diary-like series “Poor, Video, Anytime God,” for which he uploads ten photographs to Tumblr every day. This zine collects all photographs Sako shot in June 2020, when the exhibition opened two months after its planned date due to the Corona pandemic.

Takashi Makino
One side of this continuous leporello is printed with scenes from Takashi Makino’s 2008 film “still in cosmos” as well as Makino’s print works “still in cosmos I”, “II” and “III” (2016), and the other features stills taken from Makino’s 2016 work “cinéma concret”. Arranged as a loop, the leporello reflects the cyclical nature of Makino’s video works in which the complex abstract images repeatedly emerge and disappear in the visual layers.