shashasha

Published by Libro Arte in 2015, Yuki Aoyama’s _School Girl Complex _is the photographer’s second photobook within his body of published works. Photographing between 2006 and 2015, Aoyama’s images are symbolically charged through his interests in ‘symbolized and impersonalized objects’ such as uniform. Driven by puberty complex the images reflect ‘a faint sense of adoration’ through the various tropes and fetishisms expressed through Aoyama’s gaze.

"Even though the girls put their uniform on, signs of their personality certainly existed, such a their diaphanous shirts, socks, legs exposed from checkered skirts, backs of knees, moles, scabs, and all. I had been under strong obsession and desire for them during my adolescence. At the same time, for the lack of experience with women, I had also had strong fear (complex) of them. By rendering and symbolizing such complicated feelings, obsession and desire in an utterly refined way, I want to express a transience and instability of puberty multilaterally."

• Yuki Aoyama excerpt from School Girl Complex 2006-2015