shashasha

Yukiko Sugiyama’s photobook “Crash/Phases” combines the series “Crash” and “Phases” to portray mankind’s collisions with the world of nature.

For “Crash”, which began in 2017, Sugiyama photographs abandoned man-made objects and structures decaying in nature: classic muscle cars disintegrating somewhere in the mountains, bomber planes falling apart in a desert, old ships corroding and coming apart, captured in detail and without restraint. While these photographs seem like post-apocalyptic landscapes, like something from a human-less future, they do portray events of the present and perhaps tell us deeper truths about humankind’s attitude towards its impact on its surroundings, or about the nature of our relationship with the world.

“Phases,” meanwhile, documents our attempts to venture far off into outer space, away from planet earth. Sugiyama includes deep space network communication dishes and other state-of-the art technologies as well as historical Soviet space suits and relics of experiments. There is an almost nostalgic air to these photographs, as if mourning for a future of the past. The combination of “Phases” with Sugiyama’s “Crash” series in a single book again stimulates further meanings and contexts of each respective work.

The back of the book includes essays by philosopher Masatake Shinohara and two afterwords by Yukiko Sugiyama (all texts included in Japanese and in English translation).