Our perception of color is made possible by cone cells in our eyes. And people with normal vision have 3 cone cell types: red, green blue. Of the 6-7million, about 45% are green, which means our eyes don’t have to work as hard to perceive the color. This also means that green is the most relaxing color to look at.
But the process in which Japanese photographer Naruki Oshima created his “Haptic Green” series as hardly relaxing at all. In fact, the images come together from a complex technical process involving hundreds of smaller elements. The art historian Valérie Douniaux explains:
The process he uses is like a scan: with the camera fixed at a precise point, the artist methodically shoots a series of images starting from the bottom left corner of the frame, up to the top right-hand side. In reassembling the shots, Oshima works meticulously to correct distortions created by the fixed camera angle and to erase overlaps, in order to give the impression of a single image, a single shot…Naruki Oshima redistributes the image’s composing elements, combining close ups with long distance frames, mixing focused with blurred.
Perhaps it’s the delicate balance of calming and complexity that makes this series so intriguing. Oshima’s photos are currently part of the group show “cognition / recognition” in Tokyo that runs through 4/19/2014.
