In Baudelaire’s collection, “Les fleurs du mal,” the poem Correspondences suggests that our daily world is a forest of pillars that supports a temple in which everything reverberates. Various scents mix and create new life.

In the Bright Forest series, Ichigo Sugawara presents a true figure of nature, the reflection of the world and the way of living as a human being. Through his contemplative approach to the universe, nature is presented in The Pillars from the Piazza di San Marco and the Tsubaki as a jointly sacred place reflecting a mystical experience. The pillars, though all the same, have weathered into their own unique personalities through time much like humans. The Tsubaki, (meaning camellia in Japanese) have a special status in the tea ceremony, which was developed as a transformation process of the self, growing with its own aesthetic based on quietness, respect and harmony. These symbols unify and connect each other through a gradual and psychological experience, forming bridges between their vision, meaning and hidden sense.

Sugawara states, “I am still spending my days faced with various objects. When i work with something new and different, I find, fortunately, bright places, a warm place on the other side of the forest. And that arises almost as a logical necessity and has a great deal of explanatory power.”

Currently, Ichigo Sugawara's work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, USA, The National Library of France in Paris, The Kobe Fashion Museum in Kobe, Japan and The Gunma Prefectural Museum of History.