Pierre-Elie de Pibrac
Hakanai Sonzai
Pierre-Elie de Pibrac goes to Japan in 2020, a country which experienced the Fukushima tsunami and where the inhabitants speak little about their emotions, their psychological and intimate concerns. He then traveled the country and met people whose destiny was turned upside down following the earthquake.
For centuries, Japan has developed the concept of Mono no Aware, a sensitivity to the ephemeral, an acute perception of the impermanence of things. The title of the work Hakanai Sonzai refers to it by this translation: “I feel myself an ephemeral creature”. Thus, over the pages of a book, which unfolds like a large-format album, the reader slowly penetrates into the intimacy of women, men and children, who slowly become “characters”. The photographer takes portraits with a view camera, in natural light, like mental images told by the subjects themselves and imagined by the artist.
Punctuated with portfolios of B&W urban landscapes printed on a different paper, Pierre-Elie de Pibrac’s images immerse us in Japanese culture.
Hakanai Sonzai
Pierre-Elie de Pibrac
Texts from Michel Poivert and Kujira Sakisaka
184 pages (89 colour and B&W photographs)
Editions Atelier EXB
Available at the gallery
55€
