• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

  ©Daisuke Morishita

• 

  ©Daisuke Morishita

• 

  ©Daisuke Morishita

• 

  ©Daisuke Morishita

• 

  ©Daisuke Morishita

• 

  ©Daisuke Morishita

PGI is pleased to present Autrement qu’être, our second exhibition of photographs by the Japanese artist Daisuke Morishita.

In his work, Morishita engages with themes such as existence or relations. As he repeats the ordinary photographic processes of witnessing reality, releasing the shutter and developing the film in the darkroom to create two-dimensional images upon the photographic paper, Morishita attempts to draw closer to the essence of things, and to prove the existence of the world.

In 2017, Morishita launched the photobook label asterisk books, through which he publishes photobooks both of his own and by upcoming young artists, and organizes exhibitions, lectures and other events.

In January 2021, Morishita received the 19th Chiba City Arts and Culture New Artist Awards’ Encouragement Prize.

In his previous series Dance with Blanks, Morishita’s focus lay on sceneries and landscapes. Through conscious use of foreground and background, he staged buildings or trees to create crevices, gaps and distances. In addition to engaging with subjects such as existence itself and the Buddhist idea of emptiness, the series formed an attempt to coexist with emptiness and to create new blank spaces upon the photographic paper.

The title of this exhibition is inspired by Otherwise Than Being, Or Beyond Essence (Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence in French) by Emmanuel Levinas, a French philosopher whom Morishita deeply reveres. It is composed of two bodies of work—one in which Morishita confronts landscapes with a 6×7 medium-format camera, similar to his previous series, and another produced with a 4×5 large-format camera as part of a series of trial-and-error experiments that began in 2014. For the 6×7 works, Morishita diverged from his narrow focus on the subject of the city to instead photograph places throughout Japan, locations defined by a long, steady accumulation of time. Through his continuous belief in photography’s capability to capture the intangible and the unknowable, his prayer-like photographic practice and his meaningful reflections about the nature of existence (human or otherwise), Morishita has developed a new style of capturing objects. Things that surround us in everyday life, whose value or meaning remain suspended in mid-air, become subjects that weave together abstract images.

“When Kinichi Obinata asked me about my photographic practice at the end of a talk we had, I inadvertently found myself saying, ‘It’s like practicing a religion all on my own.’ This series also contains images of people seemingly in prayer, perhaps because that line has stuck in my head ever since. The photographer is free to believe in something, but they should not make it clear what that may be. The question of how we are going to preserve unknowability and mysteriousness within the fluid object of the ‘photograph’—which includes the photographer as well—is an important one.”

The exhibition Autrement qu’être at PGI is composed of approximately 30 gelatin silver prints.

Words and objects blend with the transparent body, and

something intangible, something unknowable takes hold within it.

Gradually, the body turns impure, and its erstwhile transparency fades.

But if not for this impurity of the body, we would be unable to respond to anything but theories and principles.

We are waiting for everything to arrive. Here, where moment meets infinity.

Daisuke Morishita

English translation by Robert Zetzsche

Daisuke Morishita

Born in 1977.  Working exclusively in black and white, Morishita has been in pursuit of “pure photography” since his debut in 2005 with Gravity Works (Shinjuku Nikon Salon). His efforts have mainly centered around consecutive solo exhibitions, which have shown an incredible verisimilitude and a unique ability to appeal to the imaginations of his audience.

Lately he has also turned his focus toward photobooks, releasing 3 books via his own publishing company ‘asterisk books’ since 2017. In addition to his own work, he has edited and released Yo Chibazakura’s Wander in the Silence and Mariko Abe’s Voice of a Bird through asterisk.

Choosing to utilize film and photographic paper in the face of the current digital landscape, Morishita aims to reinvigorate our visual culture by enhancing the perceptual and physical experiences of the viewer. In January 2021 his work was recognized with the Encouragement Prize of 19th Chiba City Arts and Culture New Artist Award.