shashasha

Usually known for his erotic photographs, with “Stuttgart” the Japanese photographer Chikashi Kasai presents a deeply personal, intimate and emotional series about his family, his past and the relentless march of time.
When he was ten years old, Kasai’s father moved the family to Stuttgart in Germany, where they stayed for four years. These were formative years for Kasai, and when the family moved back to Japan, he made the decision to stay in Germany, joining his family only after learning of his mother’s grave illness another four years later.
The book “Stuttgart” chronicles Kasai’s trip back to Germany, together with his mother, in 2021. The journey, filled with difficult emotional situations and old scars that would be torn open, is captured in photographs of meaningful places, quick roadside rests, and, most poignantly, straight and unadorned photographs of Kasai’s mother in the nude, shot in Kasai’s characteristic style.

“I asked Hisako bluntly what made her feel like having her son photograph her naked body, and she replied with a smile…”
― from Kazue Ohdaira’s afterword “A Deeper Cycle” (included in Japanese and in English translation)