Ryosuke Toyama

Tracing the history of photography, I have created works that explore light and time while incorporating classical techniques. Photography and the camera, shaped by technological innovation and social change, developed as tools to capture light more efficiently. Along the way, countless methods and devices were invented, only to be abandoned and buried in history. By focusing on these discarded techniques, experiencing them firsthand, and recontextualizing them in the present, I continue to search for new forms of expression. Currently, I am engaged in producing works with the camera obscura, emphasizing its role as an instrument for understanding natural phenomena since antiquity. In doing so, I have devised my own technique, Tempusgraph, which captures the very “shape of time.”

What is Tempusgraph?

The world around us is filled with light emitted by the sun, scattering as it reflects off

countless surfaces. Inside the camera obscura, however, light moves only in one direction — away from the lens — projecting the outside scene onto an inner screen. At this very moment, the light passing through the lens is forming an image on the screen. The light near the lens can be thought of as the light that is about to form an image, while the light beyond the screen is the light that has already completed its image. If the screen is rotated 90 degrees, then on that plane the light of the future, the present, and the past coexist. Because light has speed, it inherently contains time. The traces of that light, I believe, are the “shape of time.” I built a camera that replaces the screen with film, making it possible to capture this optical phenomenon. This technique is what I call Tempusgraph.