Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film is pleased to announce an exhibition with Kazumi Kurigami from October 29 until November 19, to coincide with the release of the publication of “Hi To Hone II.” For the exhibition we will be presenting a series of eight Polaroids listed within the publication, as well as two other published Polaroids which have been enlarged and printed to 180 x 180cm.

On “Hi To Hone II”

The moment I press the shutter within my daily life, or in the midstream of my travels, there is no sense of sound. The sound of the shutter alone resonates amidst the void of my conscious in which I focus upon the act of seeing. The moment when time inadvertently comes to a standstill and the wind stops blowing; the shadow of death appears. Fragments of my memory hunted and gathered through allowing my vision to drift within the world as dictated physically by such instincts. I brought together the accumulation of these images under the title “Hi To Hone” within to two publications, one in black and white, and the other in color, in 1984.
The Polaroid SX-70 was released in 1972. When using this thin, box-shaped camera, rather than a reflexive response, it becomes a conscious observation. The images which appear within the square frame, lack reality and three-dimensionality, and possess a light-headedness as if it were a memory of a dream. Such surface-skin footage is alluring in that it exposes all that exists, as images which are each equivalent in worth. “Hi To Hone II,” is created through the inkjet printing of scanned data from the Polaroid photographs taken by the SX-70.

Kazumi Kurigami, August 2011

Ever since 1965 in which he began his career as an independent photographer, Kurigami, whom over the past 46 years has continued to work actively within the forefront of advertising photography and commercials, separate to such work, has released publications in which he had photographed without restrictions to a specific theme, physical objects which had inspired him directly (“Hi To Hone,” 1984 and “Diary,” 2005). Kurigami states that what is important when photographing, is to possess a physicality and instinct which is separate from those of others, and to respond instantly to this sensation. Such publications produced through the act of photographing with the aim of sharpening one’s sensation in sympathizing and reflecting upon the subject, could be seen as the essence of Kurigami’s condensed aesthetic conscious.

Within “Hi To Hone II,” 120 works photographed and collected by Kurigami using the Polaroid SX-70 between 1972 and 2011, will be presented. Please take this opportunity to view Kurigami’s series of experimental works which span over a period of 39 years, in turn portraying the stimulation of his structural aesthesis through the sense of unrealness distinct to that of the Polaroid.