shashasha

Taichi Tomiyama's mesmerizing "Origenes: (Cuba4)" began seventeen years ago with a trip to Cuba. Interested in its historical and cultural past as a quasi-counterpoint to the values he had grown up with in Japan, Tomiyama traveled to Cuba with a camera and a bag full of film to document his experiences. But when he returned to Japan, most of the film did not develop properly. Left with vague memories and the loss of his images, Tomiyama realized the intimate connections between memory, history, photography, and seeing.
In "Origenes: (Cuba4)," he explores the historical evolution of the act of seeing and its close ties to a society's collective memory through photographs, collages, prints, and other methods.

“Perhaps the ‘desire to see’ is the essence of history, which is constantly changing, as well as the driving force that has created that history. In particular, the existence of photography, cameras, media, and personal travel, which developed after the Industrial Revolution (from around 1760) fundamentally changed the nature of the desire for visual experiences. These images have been mass-produced, consumed, and spread around the world through the medium paper.”
― from Taichi Tomiyama’s afterword