Naotatsu Kaku
“THE LAKE”
2021Grand Prize
ARTIST STATEMENT
THE LAKE
The Japanese saying mizu ni nagasu [literally “let the water carry it away”] means to forget past troubles as if they never happened. Some aspects of the history between Japan and Singapore, however, cannot be easily washed away — an idea that can be summed up as “forgive, but never forget”.
The photographs appearing in this work were taken at locations connected to the history between Japan and Singapore. I took a shower with each of the prints and washed some of the ink away. I then recorded on video the process of recalling what had been in those areas of the photographs where the ink was peeled off.
Photographs can be evidence of the past, but lack of evidence does not erase the truth. Unfortunately, in the absence of evidence, we often forget the truth or overwrite it.
Entries form: Video (21:17)
Single-channel video (25:52)
Selecting judge: Noi Sawaragi
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to more restrictions than ever on our freedom to gather and to move about. While experiences with the changing of the seasons and encounters with unknown people, which should be important for photography, have become scarce, new time divisions in the form of “waves” that indicate the state of infections and internal confrontations with the unknown self have surfaced. I, too, found myself choosing photographs that represented “the inland”, “freshwater (rivers and lakes)”, “the introverted” and “the domestic”. Among these, the most daring and dense things to emerge were unconventional time axes, unforeseen changes, and generative transformations occurring in the immediate distance.
PROFILE
Naotatsu Kaku
| 1990 | Born in Tokyo |
| 2016 | Graduated from the Fiction Course at the Film School of Tokyo |
| 2017 | Selected for an Honorable Mention Award at the 40th Canon New Cosmos of Photography |
| 2018 | Selected as a finalist at the 2018 Kyotographie KG+ Awards |
| 2019 | Selected for the 2019 Gunma Biennale for Young Artists |
Major exhibitions
| 2019 | A Neighbour in Prague (Koganecho AIR Exhibition) |
| 2020 | Living Things Inside Living Things (Makii Masaru Fine Arts) |
| 2021 | Minami Kara (Gallery Tochika, Ryurodo) |
2021Grand Prize
