“Obake”

“Obake”, 2014. Pigment print laminated under Diasec, 40 x 30 cm. Editions of 5 + 1 artist’s proof.

“Obake” (“ghost” in Japanese) can be translated as “things that change”. With this project, I envision ghosts as forms or events that gradually change as we look for them or stare at them, rather than as a myth per se. We see in this series silhouettes disappearing in the dark, the fragile traces of fleeting apparitions encountered during long night walks in the Kansai region of Japan. Every night for two weeks, I took pictures during systematic walks accompanied by my friend Marie Sommer. We could be alone or accompanied, decide where we were going or just walk randomly, the only rule was to walk all night and every night. Here, the search for “ghosts” was rather a pretext to experiment with the wandering of our bodies (and the people who accompanied us) in the city. By dint of wandering in search of intangible things, I noticed a change in attitude on the part of her walking companions, like fits of sweet madness caused by this quest for nothing.
This series is half of a corpus produced in collaboration with photographer Marie Sommer during a residency at the Kyoto Art Center. It was acquired by the FCAC of Marseille. A book project bringing together the two series is in progress.