Hayato Takekoshi

From the series ‘Certainly There’.

I have lost consciousness due to a brain disorder, and I am unable to define my existence without memories. Reality also seems doubtful, and the question of "what is certain" fills my mind. The way to clarify this question was to use a technique called negative-positive inversion, which focuses on life, mainly trees. The impressions I felt from life remained there even when I changed my perspective, and were a sign of my own existence. A photograph is originally said to accurately depict an object, but my photographs encourage self-awareness and question identity by visualising sensations.

While utilising techniques that have become possible with the development of photographic technology, I attempt to confirm existence by destroying the depiction of reality captured by the camera. Using the inversion technique and repeated digital development, the image information is destroyed and lost, and when printed on traditional Japanese paper, the image becomes blurred and unclear. As the captured reality crumbles, only the ‘impression of life’ that I felt was extracted. In an age where photographs can be corrected with data and Al, the only thing that remained certain was the phenomenon of ‘what I felt’. And in order to understand the true nature of the question ‘Who am I?’, the exhibition aims to get to the roots of sensations and impressions through photography and stimulate thinking from a new perspective. 

Hayato Takekoshi was born in Aichi, Japan in 1987.