Blue Flower   Yoichiro Nishimura
500 copies limited

​Author / Yoichiro Nishimura

Edit / Design  Yoichi Tamori
Poetry / Akiko Niimi
Translation / Nobuko Kawata
Comment / Daido Moriyama & Kotaro Iizawa

Publisher / Kamakura Gendai Co., Ltd.
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Printing / Yamada Photo Process Co., Ltd.
Printing Director / Katsumi Kumakura
Bookbinding / Shibuya Bunsenkaku Co., Ltd.

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■ Artist Profile

Yoichiro Nishimura
Born in Tokyo in 1967. Nishimura completed the Photography Workshop at Bigakko (Art School) and began his career after working as a photography assistant. He became an independent freelance photographer in 1990.

Focusing on camera-less photographic techniques such as photograms and scangrams, he creates works using motifs including plants, water, insects, and the human nude.

He has been selected for and awarded in numerous exhibitions and competitions, including 20 Promising Young Photographers (PARCO), Young Portfolio Exhibition (K’MoPA), the 1999 EPSON Color Imaging Contest, the PHILIP MORRIS ART AWARD 2000, and the TPCC Challenge (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum).

■ Includes an essay by Daido Moriyama

There is a dream-like atmosphere surrounding the world of images created by Yoichiro Nishimura―a dream subtly cool, erotic and mysterious.

In the middle of the night, as I turn off the light and close my eyes, there appear spectacles of various lights glowing like phosphorescence in the back of the eyelids, slowly flowing across the retina. Whenever my senses experience this indefinable transition of light, I find myself immersed in Nishimura’s visions.  A journey into a sensual, alluring world of the microcosms―Blue Flower is a sublimation of Nishimura’s creative sensitivity.

Daido Moriyama

■ Includes an essay by Kotaro Iizawa

​Flowers of the Shadow

Kotaro Iizawa (Photography critic)

Photogram is one of the oldest techniques in the area of photography. In fact, this could be said to have existed before the invention of photography; there are historical records, predating the creation of photography, which describes the process of capturing a photographic image, by placing the object on top of a paper coated with silver chloride and silver nitrate, and exposing it to light.

Being fascinated by the medium of photogram, Yoichiro Nishimura has continued to apply this technique into many of his artworks over the past years. His practice is not about mere representation of a conscious revival of traditional techniques, nor a return to the source. For Nishimura, photogram is rather a promising ground that allows him to explore and expand his new creative expressions; furthermore, the medium could indicate the possibility of new photographic expressions, still yet to come.

Nishimura has undertaken a new and original photographic technique, which he calls scangram. Scangram can be described as a digital version of photogram. It is a technique to create a negative digital image of an object, such as flowers and leaves, by placing them on top of a scanner. The biggest feature is in how the color is reversed from the original color into the complimentary color, as much as how the form and outline of an object is captured; thus a red Hibiscus or Azalea would result in a blue-ish outcome. The visual effect is extraordinary; the flowers exude a mystic atmosphere, as if they were bathed in moonlight. Through transforming themselves from the world of the positive to the negative, “flowers of the shadow” come to light.

When looking back in the history of photography as media expressions, we come across practitioners – similar to magicians or alchemists – who indulged their passions in creating mystical images, rather than representing or documenting the reality as it is. For them, photogram remained an important tool for their creative expressions. Man Ray, known as “alchemist of images”, is one of the many practitioners of photogram representing the 20th century; and clearly, Yoichiro Nishimura is a photographer following the same artistic lineage.

His exploration of photogram will show no end. In the case of scangram, I see no reason why the motif should be limited to plants; potentially, the range of subject matter could be expanded to various objects and living things – including human. Having said that, I feel it was genuinely positive that he started the series with botanical motifs; as the “flowers of the shadow”, emanating subtly in the darkness, illuminate the artist himself – reticent, yet remarkably passionate deep inside.

■ Printing Supervised by Printing Director Keizo Kumakura

Keizo Kumakura
Printing Director

Kumakura has collaborated with numerous leading creators, producing works through close, collaborative processes. His collaborators include Yusaku Kamekura, Ikko Tanaka, Kazumasa Nagai, Mitsuo Katsui, Katsumi Asaba, Mari Namikawa, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Taishiro Jomonji, and Shintaro Shiratori, among many others.

■ 58th National Catalogue Exhibition (Catalogue Division)

Double Award Winner:
Gold Award and Director-General of the National Printing Bureau Award

Judges’ Commentary

Unlike many catalogues expressed through a wide range of colors, this work is composed solely around subtle gradations of blue.
Simple yet striking, the translucent blue flowers leave a powerful impression at first glance, lingering vividly in the viewer’s mind.
Quiet in tone, yet forceful in its beauty, this is a work that presses itself upon the viewer with undeniable presence.

— From the catalogue of the 58th National Catalogue Exhibition