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  Stillness, 2023 ©Yoshihiko Ito

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  Vessel of Time, 2022. ©Yoshihiko Ito

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  In Praise of the Darkroom, 2023. ©Yoshihiko Ito

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  At the Beach 03, 2024. ©Yoshihiko Ito

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  Darkroom 18, 2021. ©Yoshihiko Ito

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  Darkroom 16, 2020. ©Yoshihiko Ito

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  Darkroom 5, 2020. ©Yoshihiko Ito

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  Darkroom 3, 2020. ©Yoshihiko Ito

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  Darkroom 1, 2020. ©Yoshihiko Ito

[NOTICE]

March 29…… Please note that the gallery will be closed from 2:30 pm to 4 pm. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

PGI is pleased to present Yoshihiko Ito’s exhibition Frottage – Ode to the Darkroom.

Yoshihiko Ito graduated from the Tokyo College of Photography and began working as a photographer in the late 1970s. Shooting with a half-size camera, he developed the Contact Sheet series, in which the contact prints themselves, with the photographs presented in the order in which they were taken, form individual compositions. In the late 1990s, he began his Patrone series, inspired by ancient Japanese picture scrolls that depict successive events within a single composition. In his work, Ito explores themes and concepts that are inherently difficult to express through photography alone, such as the flow of time and consciousness.

When the photographic paper he used to create his Patrone series went out of production and it became difficult to continue the series, Ito began searching for new ways to express himself. Deeply passionate about film photography and working in the darkroom, Ito found himself picking up rolls of unused film and finding inspiration in “all the images they stirred up” within him. Having often worked with storyboards and sketches in planning his photographic works, Ito was naturally drawn to the method of frottage and began to use photographic film as the theme and subject of his work.

Frottage is a technique that draws on the randomness of textures, shapes, and patterns created when paper or cloth is applied to uneven surfaces and rubbed. While most of his motifs are related to photographic film, Ito’s work is defined by image compositions that capture the imaginary worlds that unfold from the film, rather than just its texture.

Since 2015, Ito has been working on his frottages on an almost daily basis, creating nearly 400 individual works to date. His previous series, Frottage – In the Film, was based on 8×10 film and used 35mm film as its subject. It explored the flow of time and consciousness, ideas that have been central to his photographic work from the beginning.

In this exhibition, titled Ode to the Darkroom, PGI presents a selection of Ito’s frottage works created between 2020 and 2024. Each work is a meticulous, hand-crafted homage that expresses Ito’s deep reverence for the darkroom.

Frottage  – Ode to the Darkroom –

In the small darkroom with its amber light, I carefully place the exposed photographic paper in the tray filled with developer fluid. As I move it with tweezers, an image begins to emerge. The process mesmerizes me, and I am moved by feelings I cannot put into words.

In my mind, I think back to the first time I made a print.

Yoshihiko Ito

English translation by Robert Zetzsche

Yoshihiko Ito

Born in Yamagata, Japan in 1951 and graduated from the Tokyo College of Photography in 1977. His works consist of contact sheets in which individual frames come together to form a whole image on each sheet, expressing the invisible time and consciousness shared between himself and his subjects. He has also been exhibiting his Patrone series since the year 2000. In Patrone, Ito takes a consecutive sequence of images taken in the same setting and collapses the separate moments into a single restructured image. Due to the discontinuation of the production of photographic paper, he gave up creating works of photographs and has employed the frottage method of pencil rubbing on paper around 2015.

Recent solo exhibitions include Frottage -In the Film-, PGI (Tokyo, 2022), Contact Print Stories, 1839 Contemporary Gallery (Taipei, 2018), Space Time –misplacement–, Timeless Gallery (Beijing, 2018), In the Box, PGI (Tokyo, 2017).