Yosuke Harada
“ World-Becoming Things ”
2012Grand Prize
ARTIST STATEMENT
World-Becoming Things
The act of taking a photo constructs a world at odds with our run-of-the-mill reality: a world that is at once divorced from everything and connected to everything. People, objects, scenes, phenomena, events are manifest in this world such that they seem empty, as if separate entities from themselves.
I make no attempt to capture the decisive moment happening here, right now. Rather I dwell, dispassionately, on what I happened to find there. And over many hours, my feelings toward the subject gradually disperse and the act of seeing is itself suspended in mid-air. As my consciousness flitters back and forth in front of no more or no less than what-is-there, unable to settle on a focal point, a kind of intermediary place takes shape where the subject and I blend into one. I'm overcome by the feeling that I'm surveying the scene from behind my head, as if my sense of sight has been yanked to the back of my eyes, and I, the observer, has disappeared.
I'm not interested in expressing my world through the medium of photography. That's because I'm waiting for the World-Becoming Things to materialize through the medium of myself.
Entries form: File, 11x14, color prints, 58 pieces
Selecting judge: Minoru Shimizu
He received the Excellence Award for being exceptionally orthodox when it comes to photography. The title “Die Welt weltet” is a saying from Heidegger I believe, with the concept of expressing the instant the world is excited in photographs. Rather than the world simply existing statically, existing is some kind of verbal event. That instant is, for example, when you look at something through a crack and are able to emphasize the existence of something that you could not see is the moment when everyday changes to a verbal state. Furthermore, he is a man with a presence, and his portraits of women taken from the front are incorporated as separators, and they leave a strong impression as a photo book. By leaving behind the usual worldly meanings, and establishing images from the phenomenon known as worlding, I feel that he has successfully achieved the basic form that photos should have. He takes a good look at the subject, and with power well established as photos, rather than a flash of new talent, and even though he does not have flair, I feel that he has potential. Being orthodox is really quite rare.
PROFILE
Yosuke Harada
| 1982 | Born in Saga Prefecture |
| 2007 | Graduated from the Department of Graphic Design at the Faculty of Art and Design, Tama Art University |
| 2012 | Received the Grand Prize at the 35th New Cosmos of Photography |
2012Grand Prize