shashasha

Shooting with natural light in a studio setting, photographer Shinichiro Uchikura asks his customers – ordinary people visiting the studio for commemorative photographs or portraits – for permission to include them in his own artistic series. The subjects illuminated against a pitch-black background, Uchikura takes several hundred shots in the span of five to ten minutes, later selecting the few unpredictable moments in which his subjects let go of their masks and unexpected expressions appear. While the photographs meet the methodological conventions of a standard “good portrait photograph,” they all have their own unique texture, their own unique “presence” in addition to the captured subject, their own mysterious world.

The book also includes a short foreword by the artist as well as essays by photo critic Mika Kobayashi and writer Joanna Fu (all texts included in Japanese and English translation).