"I look at a photograph. It’s a photograph I took in the past. It was not so long ago that I took the photograph. Enough time has passed, however, that I cannot clearly recall the time when I shot the photograph. What was I thinking when I took this photograph? I probably did not mean anything special, but I must have been conscious of something. What was that consciousness? I cannot recall. Or perhaps I no longer know such consciousness. If I shot the photograph, I must have been present at the scene in which the photograph was taken. The photograph exists as a connection between the photographic subject, camera, and me. The photograph remains mainly unchanged, while experience changes memory. The memory and the photograph were created in the same place but they exist differently in time. The past appears fixed, but transforms according to changes in my consciousness." (Daisuke YOKOTA)
About Japanese photographer, Daisuke YOKOTA (b.1983, in Saitama)
Daisuke YOKOTA graduated from the Nippon photography institute in 2003. His photographs look like classic images by Daido MORIYAMA, but he has arrived at his style and method through entirely organic means. He claims director David Lynch and musician Aphex Twin as influences; due to the way they distort sensory information in their respective works. He is attempting to introduce ideas of fade, reverb and echo to photography, and this is what’s led him to his unique approach. E.g. to create 'Back Yard', he used a painstaking method in which he printed out his photographs and re-photographed them up to 10 times. Through an intentionally careless developing technique, he introduced new distortions into the image each time that the film was processed. Along with this process of re-photography, he has also used modified versions of the same image in different projects. Recently he joined the photographic group AM Projects, which features a number of European photographers.
Photo books by as well as with contribution by Daisuke YOKOTA
- 'Water Side' (2010); 'Site' (2011); 'Back Yard' (2012); 'Nocturnes' (2012, together with Tiane Doan Na CHAMPASSAK); 'Corpus' (2014); 'Vertigo' (2014); 'A.M.S. Type A' (2014); 'Toransupearento' (2014); Teikai-Trilogy: 'Wandering at Midnight' & 'Linger' (2014) & 'Immerse' (2015); 'New York' (2015); 'Taratine' (2015); 'Untitled' (2015); 'Abstracts' (2015, together with works by Tiane Doan Na CHAMPASSAK and by Antony CAIRNS); 'Cell Set (A/B/C/D)' (2015); 'Effect Twin. P.T.H' (2015, together with works by Hiroshi TAKIZAWA); 'Matter/Burn Out' (2016); 'Untitled ' (2017); 'Towards the North' (2017); 'Room' (2017); 'Room Re' (2017); 'Cloud' (2017); 'Cloud Re' (2017); 'Calx' (2017); 'Calx2' (2017); 'Berlin' (2017); '100 Bilder' (2017, together with works by Hiroshi TAKIZAWA and by Yoshi KAMETANI); 'AM Projects' (2017, together with works by Thomas VANDENBERGHE, Tiane Doan na CHAMPASSAK, Olivier PIN-FAT, Laura RODARI as well as by Hiroshi TAKIZAWA); 'Scum' (2018); 'Cool in the Pool' (2018); '11.30.2015' (2018); 'Broken Mirrors' (2020); 'The Scrap' (2020, together with Kenta COBAYASHI); 'Untitled' (2021); 'Photography, green/blue' (2021); 'New Photographic Objects' (2022, together with works by Hiroshi TAKIZAWA, Nerhol, Teppei SAKO, Takashi MAKINO); 'Matter/Burn Out - Special ed.' (2022); 'Sha Shin Magazine Vol. 1' (together with works by Mayumi HOSOKURA, Yusuke YAMATANI, Daido MORIYAMA, Keizo KITAJIMA, Osamu KANEMURA, a.o.);
Exhibitions (a selection)
- 2008: 'New Cosmos of Photography Tokyo’, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography;
2010: ‘1_Wall ’, Guardian Garden, Tokyo;
2012: ‘MP1: Expanded Retina’ and ‘On the flow’, G/P gallery, Tokyo;
2013: 'Site/Cloud', G/P gallery, Tokyo;
2021: 'In my bubble', Christophe Guye Gallery, Zurich;
2021-2022: 'Prix Pictet 2021, Fire' (together with Rinko KAWAUCHI), Christophe Guye Gallery, Zurich;
2023: 'Nude Photography in Black & White' (online only)