“Diorama Map Tokyo” (March – July 2004) | click to enlarge
Big cities can be an isolating, coldhearted sort of place where loneliness engulfs you like dry heat. But not for 29-year old photographer Sohei Nishino, whose work is currently on display at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, along with other up-and-coming photographers. Yoshino’s Diorama Maps, as he calls them, are highly personal recreations of cities that he has visited. Yoshino spends months walking the city streets, taking black-and-white photographs with his 35 mm camera. From his hundreds of contact sheets he cuts out the photos – often as many as 10,000 – to create elaborate 3D collages.
These are my personal memories of a city. The photographs I take and the way I assemble them are influenced by what I personally experienced: what I saw, whom I met and even what I ate
– Nishino in a recent interview
But for Yoshino the process doesn’t end with the collage. Because he wants the viewer to experience his pieces as photographs, he trims them evenly and the reshoots them with a digital camera. Fascinating! I highly encourage you to click the images to enlarge them.
Contemporary Japanese Photography vol.10 elan photographic runs until January 29, 2012.
“Diorama Map New York” (February – July 2006) | click to enlarge
“Diorama Map Paris” (May 2007 – November 2008) | click to enlarge
“Diorama Map Rio de Janeiro” (March – June 2011) | click to enlarge
all images courtesy Sohei Nishino
source: Japan Times
