Born in Nagoya in 1969, Naohiro Ninomiya is a Japanese photographer who has lived in France since 1998. The photographer draws his inspiration from his emotional attachments to his family, his house in Japan and his daily life in France. His work is similar to that of an archaeologist: the gesture that he performs with the developer like the stroke of a brush over ancient artefacts. Instead of producing images that are consumed too quickly by the viewer, he seeks to give back value to memories through the materiality of his prints.
The stills from the ‘Katami’ series (2013) are not photographs, but rather photograms. They are created by placing an object directly on top of photosensitive paper and, when exposed to light, it is ultimately the object’s shadow that is captured. By capturing the ‘soul’ of objects more directly than with a traditional photograph, he is to some extent here affixing the soul of his dead mother – whom these kimonos belonged to – onto the paper itself.
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Images © Naohiro Ninomiya
