shashasha

“Wandering” features 35 photographs taken by contemporary artist Kohei Nawa in Kyoto during his time as a student at the Kyoto City University of Arts in 1995 and 1996. These were formative years prior to the first prototypes of the “PixCell” series that brought international acclaim to Nawa, whose sculptures explore the intersection and mutual relationships of virtual and physical spaces.

Walking through Kyoto with a second-hand 35mm film camera in hand, Nawa took unstaged snapshots of people and situations. Taken from an unobtrusive distance, Nawa’s photograph capture a soft kind of forlornness and isolation. In addition to capturing a now-lost time just before the rise of the internet, “Wandering” also encapsulates the budding sensibilities of Kohei Nawa as an artist.

“When I started studying at the sculpture department of Kyoto City University of Arts, I went through a certain period in which I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do as an artist. It was at this time that I began taking photographs with a second-hand camera that I came across in my boarding house.

The photos that I took while wandering around the city as my interests dictated had been stowed away for over twenty years in a cardboard box in my parents’ home, and I had never particularly looked back on them until now.

In those days I had taken on the attitude of passively observing the city’s streets, its people, and the atmosphere of the times as a distanced onlooker. However, every now and again in these photographs I find glimpses of the things that had fascinated and impulsively attracted my attention.”
― Kohei Nawa