中井菜央『雪の刻』       Book Design：須山悠里       発行：赤々舎   Size： H255mm ×  W210mm   Page：176 pages   Binding：Hardcover   Published in Feb 2022   ISBN：978-4-86541-142-3	¥ 5,000＋tax  国内送料無料！ 【国内／Domestic Shipping】  お支払い方法は、銀行振込、郵便振替、 クレジットカード支払い、PayPal、PayPay よりお選び頂けます。 【海外／International Shipping】 ＊ Please choose your area from the two below    　　　 Book + Asia shipping ￥7,440 JPY Book + World shipping ￥9,060 JPY

About Book

雪が律する時間、雪が生み出す存在。

THE TIME RULED BY SNOW 

Nao NAKAI

Seven years ago, I traveled around the areas in the north with heavy snowfall before heading south, arriving at Tsunan Town in Niigata. What I saw was three meters of persistent snow--melting and softening in the daytime, freezing and compressing at night--like large waves sweeping over the city, engulfing everything. I decided to shoot there.

The snow clouds took away the light in the sky, while the snow that had accumulated on the ground completely absorbed sound. But inside the house, nothing changed. Time stood still. The endless silence was broken by the roar of the snow sliding off the roof. Time, which had stopped, became more urgently present. However, such commotions that feel life-threatening for those staying inside are just tiny dots spread across the whole place. The pinhole, plugged with snow, brings us back to the world where sound and time are even more inanimate than before the event took place.

In the middle of April, we started hearing a dripping sound from inside the snowpack. The snow has melted and created a hollow space inside. Such minute changes gradually link with each other and form clusters. When the degree of change exceeds a certain point, it undergoes an explosive transformation. The hollow becomes an opening to the outside, through which time emerges with colors, sounds, and smells, twisting and forcing its way forward, while plants and animals--transcending species and categories--overlap and merge as one life. Time invigorates nature and people. 

It was 8000 years ago that snow began to fall on this land. The strata have proven it. Earthenware shows how people's lives and culture mutated in response to snow. A forest of large and small trees, twisted by snow, creates the illusion of constant swaying. Even after the land returns to its original state, the traces of the villages and rice fields never cease to speak of the past. The pale black eyes belong to the people who were born, and grew older, under the reflected light of the humid snow.          

This is a place where time is carved individually by all things, melting and echoing the time once carved, creating a singular vibrancy.

As its name dissolves, the land reverts into a zone where "snow" falls.

I tried to capture the "time" ruled by the "snow."

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Related Exhibiton

中井菜央「雪の刻（とき）」 あざみ野フォト・アニュアル 会期：2022年1月29日（土）〜2月27日（日） 時間：10:00〜18:00 会場：横浜市民ギャラリーあざみ野  （横浜市青葉区あざみ野南1-17-3） 会期中無休、入場無料 関連イベント「雪の刻」対談 日時｜2月19日（土）14:00-15:30 出演｜中井菜央（企画展出品作家）、佐藤雅一 （津南町農と縄文の体験実習館なじょもん学芸員） 会場｜3階 アトリエ 定員｜30名 参加費｜500円（要事前申し込み） 関連イベント「雪の刻」アーティスト・トーク 日時｜2月26日（土）14:00-15:00 出演｜中井菜央（企画展出品作家） 聞き手｜佐藤直子（担当学芸員） 会場｜3階 アトリエ 定員｜30名 参加費｜500円（要事前申し込み）

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Artist Information 

中井菜央 

1978年 滋賀県生まれ 東京都在住 

2006年 日本写真芸術専門学校卒業

主な個展

2022「雪の刻」横浜市⺠ギャラリーあざみ野（神奈川）
2021 「破れる風景」津南町農と縄文の体験実習館なじょもん（新潟）
2019 「繡」gallery Main（京都）
2019 「繡」Classic Lab 柳の家（新潟）
2018 「繡」Roonee 247 fine arts（東京）
2014 「未明」銀座ニコンサロン、大阪ニコンサロン

主なグループ展

2021 「人間より大きな世界へ」榕异美術館（上海）
2019 「KG+SELECT」元淳風小学校（京都）

受賞

2023 日本写真協会賞新人賞
2022 さがみはら写真新人奨励賞
2008  第4回「名取洋之助写真賞」奨励賞

Nao NAKAI

1978 Born in Shiga Prefecture Lives and works in Tokyo

2006 Graduated from Nippon Photography Institute


Solo Exhibitions

2022 "THE TIME RULED BY SNOW"Yokohama Civic Art Galley Azamino,Kanagawa
2021 "landscape fragment" the Agriculture and jomon Experience facility, Tsunanmachi, Niigata

2019 "Shu" Classic Lab "Yanagi no Ie", Niigata
2019 "Shu" Galley Main, Kyoto
2018 "Shu" Roonee 247 Fine Arts, Tokyo
2014 "Mimei" Ginza Nikon salon, Tokyo, Osaka Nikon salon


Group Exhibitions

2021 "The World Beyond the World" Rongyi Art Museum, Shanghai
2019 "KG+Select" Former Junpu Elementary School, Kyoto


Awards

2023 Photographic Society of Japan Emerging Artist Award
2022 Sagamihara Emerging Photographer Incentive Award
2008 The 4th Yonosuke Natori Photographic Award- Encouraging Award

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Related Contents

写真家が向き合っているもの。 中井菜央＋田附勝＋佐藤雅一 （ほぼ日刊イトイ新聞）

小野啓『モール』       Book Design：groovisions   Cooperation：silverbooks   発行：赤々舎   Size： H182mm × W226mm   Page：116 pages   Binding：Hardcover   Published in Junuary 2022   ISBN：978-4-86541-139-3	¥ 3,000＋tax  国内送料無料！ 【国内／Domestic Shipping】  お支払い方法は、銀行振込、郵便振替、 クレジットカード支払い、PayPal、PayPay よりお選び頂けます。 【海外／International Shipping】 ＊ Please choose your area from the two below    　　　 Book + Asia shipping ¥4,450 JPY Book + World shipping ¥4,700 JPY

About Book

私たちが生きている場所を問いかけるモールの風景

MALL 

KEI ONO

The mall makes me wonder what sort of world we are living in now. I wonder about the circulation of human activity, of the world in relation to humans.

Since 2002, I have been the photographing high-school students for a project that has resulted in two books: The Glare of Youth and NEW TEXT. Interested parties respond to a call I put out online, then I visit each of them in their hometown and take pictures at locations familiar to them. As the project went on, I realized that more and more of these students were choosing shopping malls. I've witnessed the mushrooming of gigantic shopping malls all over Japan. Now the malls are everywhere. Sometimes when I'm at one, I lose all sense of where I am. Something very new has been constructed in our society.

Almost twenty years have passed, and the high-schoolers whom I photographed are now in their middle or late thirties. They go to the malls with their new families. The mall is a very common after-school stop among teenagers today.

The project made me think that the scenes of the malls are, in some sense, the contemporary Japanese landscape. My generation missed out on the experience, but I've nurtured my own relationship with malls through photographing the students.

I started taking photos of malls in 2012. This series is a record of Japanese malls in the 2010s.［...]

The mall is like a city, although it is enclosed. Once you are out of it, you feel you no longer belong to it. The idea of whether you're inside or outside switches once you drive away from the building in your car, or in my case, when you take the bus to the nearest train station.

It has always been in the evening that I take a return bus. One day, I wanted to see the area outside the mall. I was curious, like Truman Burbank in the film The Truman Show.

What I found was simply the world in which I live. Around the mall, new residences were being built. Lining the streets were shops of major electronics retailers or fast-food giants, and on the roads were the trucks that supported it all. OK. This is our world. What I had thought of as separate things were in fact connected, and the mall was part of that whole too.

I was sure that the medium-format rangefinder camera was the best fit for the theme. I'd been using the camera since I was a student, and I walked tirelessly with it and a foldable tripod all over Japan. The nature of the project seemed to have expanded from portraits to include landscapes as well.

The more I walked, the more aware I became of the surroundings of each mall. Malls have sides to them that even their creators couldn't have foreseen; and that was the making of the world which we had subconsciously taken for granted. In the twenty years that I've done this, I've always tried to imagine the stories behind the people and places in my photos, but there are still so many things I don't know.

I want to know people. I want to understand this vast world, even a tiny fraction of it. For that purpose, I choose photography.

KEI ONO