shashasha

The world without boundaries, no separating ideas of races, religion or man-made borders

Upon opening Japanese photographer Uruma Takezawa’s photobook “Boundary”, the reader is overwhelmed with the sublime beauty of Iceland’s natural landscapes. Takezawa, who has traveled to more than one hundred countries around the globe, begins with discrete scenes, lets us see the world through the eyes of bugs or small animals before raising high above to offer a bird’s eye view. Takezawa’s photography both obscures and abstracts as well as accepts and presents nature’s beauty as-is. Interspersed are observations and portraits from the human world – taken in Africa, South America, Tibet, Jerusalem and many other places – to which we travel freely and without any boundaries, to return to the calming if overwhelming embrace of Iceland’s natural grandeur.

“Looking up at [the birds flying overhead], I thought that from their point of view they must be looking at a human being like as a part of the ground. For them, of course, there are no boundaries, races, religion or borderlines. These are just conceptions which impermanent human beings have invented. Seen from the viewpoint of a bird or the earth, they might make no sense.”
— from Uruma Takezawa’s afterword

All texts included in Japanese and in English translation.