Rat Hole Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Keizo Kitajima entitled ISOLATED PLACES. On view from April 6 until May 13, this exhibition marks the second time for Kitajima's work to be shown at Rat Hole Gallery following his exhibition PORTRAITS in 2009. ISOLATED PLACES will consist of 24 photographs of landscapes taken in various regions across Japan between 1992 and 2012.
After becoming known for his street photography taken both within and outside of Japan from the late 1970s until the early 1990s, in 1992, Keizo Kitajima embarked on two new bodies of work- his PORTRAITS series, featuring portraits of people in white shirts against a white background, and his PLACES series, featuring landscapes void of human figures. Over the past twenty years, Kitajima has worked on these two series concurrently and continues to do so today. The exhibition will be the first time for PLACES to be shown across the span of two decades.
For his early works in his PLACES series, most photographs were taken in major cities around the world including Tokyo, London, New York, and Hong Kong. The homogeneous landscape of a metropolitan setting as a result of the spectacular phenomenon of globalism is expressed in Kitajima's images. However, from the late 1990s, most of his works have been taken only in Japan, and in more recent years, in small villages and remote islands in the countryside of Japan. While the shift in his subject from urban to rural locations is at first glance a shift between polar opposites- global homogeneity vs. vernacular disparities- Kitajima is more so concerned with the idea of capturing “landscapes that have lost a name and face.”
Such landscapes can be found all over Japan, but rarely do we notice them. They are “isolated places” that have forgotten their past and lost sight of their future.
-Keizo Kitajima
In conjunction with this exhibition, Rat Hole Gallery will publish “ISOLATED PLACES,” a book containing over eighty of Keizo Kitajima's photographs from his PLACES series.
