With pleasure we announce the solo-exhibition BLACKOUT by the prominent Japanese photographer Hitoshi Fugo.
The exhibition features works that Fugo has created over a long period from the early 1980s to the early 2000s during his extensive travels to India, Mexico and the U.S. The series captures the subtle moments of the everyday passage of time. Fugo’s uniquely dark and abstract vision goes back to his childhood trauma of severe asthma attacks. Recalling the sensation of losing consciousness while gasping for air, he writes: “I became aware through such experiences that the world, myself included, is constantly transforming.” Fugo then refers to the moment that he presses the shutter button of his camera, lifting the mirror inside during which short moment he only sees the pitch black darkness within the camera. He calls this fraction of a moment “暗転'（’anten’ in Japanese, meaning blackout, the theatrical term indicating the moment of blackness before a scene change). For Fugo photography is not about documenting reality but about the ability of photography to disconnect objects and people from reality during this moment of blackout. With the series BLACKOUT Fugo discovered how he could express his inner world, resulting in mesmerising images free from a specific time or location.
In 2018 the Italian publishing house L’Artiere published the artist’s book BLACKOUT, that is available in our book department.
