ONORATO, Taiyo & Nico KREBS - Continental Drift

Background information

"In April 2013, Swiss photographers Nico KREBS & Taiyo ONORATO - who have been working together for twelve years - set out on a journey east in a vintage 87 Toyota Landcruiser. The approximate route had been traced with a finger on the map, as well as the hoped-for end point of the journey determined: Ulaanbataar (Ulan Bator), capital of Mongolia. A real expedition trip: a departure to the mystical realm of the East, Eurasia, Central Asia, the foothills of the Himalayas, the forests of Siberia, the Stan Republics, the gigantic expanse of the former Soviet Union.  A huge continent, a landmass of which very few images are anchored in our minds, at least none clear, defined, rather a fog of history and world politics.  Nico KREBS & Taiyo ONORATO went in search of these images, they wanted to reproduce them, to create them.

Content

The photobook 'Continental Drift' by Taiyo ONORATO & Nico KREBS is a trip along the borders of documentation and fiction of an unknown terrain and its possible past and speculative future. Central were the moments of the absolutely foreign, inaccessible, bizarre paired with an impressive openness and hospitality, which they have never been able to experience in such a debauched way and which is in noticeable contrast to their last trip through the United States ('The Great Unreal', already in its third edition). Many of the countries and regions traversed are in a state of flux: somewhere between millennia of tradition and history, post-communist location, religious, territorial, ethnic turmoil, and an urgent desire to connect to global turbo-capitalism - the search for identity is palpable.  This search, as well as confusion, is reflected in 'Continental Drift'." (© Edition Frey, 2017)

About Swiss photography duo Taiyo ONORATO & Nico KREBS

Photo books by Taiyo ONORATO & Nico KREBS