artist entry: week 02: sept 06

TOKIHIRO SATO: photography: photo-respiration

interest and relations:

I have chosen this artist, because from the very first moment I saw his photograph, I was inspired. I felt life stirring within the image, it rendered me breathless, nonetheless, his intent was to create images that were "expression of living, breathing existence." His work process would take from one to three hours to create one image. A good portion of my fascination for long exposures, rooted from Sato. It is the mysterious nature of exposing an image for a length of
time, expecting the expected to render, but also expecting the unexpected to be captured as
well. I admire Sato's work, from an artist to artist aspect, because of the meticulous, immaculate process. Patience and persistence are key component in his work, and I have realized that those are two essential ingredients in my work as well.

biography:

Japan's best known artists working in photography. Sato, born in Japan, intention to become a sculptor, working with iron and steel into forms that directed flows of water and light. Highly aware of the physical process of creating, as a graduate he began to learn how to use a large format camera, and began incorporating photography into his sculpture. He, soon, was able to explore the nature of space, light, and movement.

quotes:
"As in his early experiments with sculptural forms, these pictures reveal a relationship between matter and energy, stillness and movement, actual forms and potential ones." (Siegel, 7-8)

"Although a photograph is always a translation of a three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional image, Sato purposefully emphasizes this discrepancy, which he calls "the gap in perspective... the physical nature of his activity through the landscape - running, swimming, breathing, sweating - is tremendously important to him... the artist welcomes his labor and refers to this ongoing series as "photo-respiration", or "breath-graphs," because of the human experience that the pictures record." (Siegel, 8)

(Satō, Tokihiro, and Elizabeth Siegel. Photo Respiration: Tokihiro Sato Photographs. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2005. Print.)

images:review link:
http://www.japanexposures.com/2009/01/30/photography-between-actual-and-potential-forms-in-tokihiro-sato/

http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/photographer-tokihiro-sato-plays-with-light-and-perspective-to-capture-a-fresh-vision-of-the-world-around-us/Content?oid=1679523

artist & gallery link:
http://www.fristcenter.org/site/exhibitions/exhibitiondetail.aspx?cid=861
http://www.hainesgallery.com/artists/Sato_Tokihiro/Sato_13.html