Takashi Yasumura
“ Domestic Scandal ”
1999Grand Prize
ARTIST STATEMENT
Domestic Scandal
This work aims to express doubts about the quality of “everyday life. ”Ordinary scenes, such as familiar places in the house, and the surroundings which we usually don’t pay attention to, are no longer familiar sights when presented in photographs. I understand that the quality of everyday life is gone just like an illusion there. The quality I normally notice disappears in the detached photographic timeframe, and that very disappearance surfaces a questionable quality of “everyday life” in my mind. I believe that photography is a means to reveal what we do not usually recognize. When I visit people, I wonder why what looks unusual to me are taken for granted as their daily affairs. What are accepted as daily practices among family members often look strange or funny to other people. This happens not only in families but also in other groups of people. Through this work, I would like to realize that the quality of “everyday life” in my mind is make-believe.
Selecting judge: Kotaro Iizawa
The work is composed of the carefully made photographs of everyday scenes, but, closely observed, there is something special; for example, pink rubber gloves are on an object in the bathroom, or a dwarf tree pot and an inorganic house are placed side by side. A dressed-up elderly man sitting on the tatami floor (perhaps the artist’s father) looks like a wax figure. Probably the artist changes or rearranges the positions of subjects. It is a kind of constructed photograph incorporated into everyday life. With such a delicately flavored technique, the essence of "everyday life" is structured. The artist’s consistent attitude is threaded through this sequential work, and that makes a powerful work from a critical approach.
PROFILE
Takashi Yasumura
Takashi Yasumura was born in Shiga Prefecture in 1972 and graduated from the Department of Photography at the College of Art, Nihon University in 1995. In 1999, he won the Grand Prize at the 8th New Cosmos of Photography. Later, in 2005, he published the photo collection Domestic Scandals and held the Takashi Yasumura Photo Exhibition at the Parco Museum. In 2006, he exhibited at the group exhibition Photo Espana in Madrid, and in 2017 he published the photo collection 1/1.
1999Grand Prize