BADEN.- Yasuhiro Ogawa is recognised as one of the new strong voices in Japanese photography. Through his unique perspectives and emotional depth, Yasuhiro Ogawa captures the beauty and mystery of travelling, creating images that are both timeless and striking. His work reinterprets the classic motifs and contemplative attitude of Japanese landscape photography. Landscapes appear as if on a canvas, pierce the steamed-up windows of a train, darkness and light bordering on each other. Snow falls on soft, darkened colours. The places in Yasuhiro Ogawa‘s pictures seem to be enchanted.

For his current series «Into the Silence», Ogawa followed in the footsteps of the haiku poet Matsuo Bashō, who travelled through northern Japan in the 17th century. The collection of poems that emerged from this journey, now known as Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Path to the Deep North), combine the complex and multi-layered form of expression of haiku with descriptions of nature in a largely unknown territory (the Japanese colonisation of Hokkaidō only took place for the most part in the 19th century), thereby also creating an important national founding myth of Japan.
Ogawa followed Bashō‘s route for 10 years, creating colour photographs that transformed the environment into dreamscapes. However, this transformation of the place always remains in the status of the binding nature of the real moment. The bold colours create abstract divisions in the compositions, making the photographs appear fragile and open. Just as the mood of a haiku resonates when we read it, we enter Yasuhiro Ogawa‘s auratic pictorial spaces and lose ourselves in them.

The Japanese woodcuts, which were created from the middle of the 18th century onwards and whose traditions have continued uninterrupted in Japan to this day, represent a further influence. The wave of Japonism at the end of the 19th century made colour prints popular in Europe. The influence of Japanese woodcuts on classical modern artists, who consistently adopted key elements in their painting techniques, is evidenced by the collections and copies of prints by artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch. Ogawa‘s colour photographs can also be understood in this tradition, with the stillness they emanate, their intense and abstract colourfulness and the presence of nature and natural events.

The slowed-down and contemplative attitude of the pictures tells of the freedom of being on the road, of the simplicity of life. His photographs intensify our inner longing for the original experience of nature outside of our self-created, increasingly artificial life structures.

At the age of 23, Ogawa discovered the photographs of Sebastião Salgado and began to take his own photographs. He spent years travelling through Asia, Africa and Central Asia to take his pictures.

In the series «The Dreaming», he looks back in 2019 and brings together a selection of black-and-white photographs from this quest, which lasted a quarter of a century. In these photographs, Ogawa mixes blurring, darkness and coarse grains with a lyrical attitude and harmonious elements. The balance of this combination and the character of the absence of these places create a heightened emotional experience of viewing. The photographer gained international recognition with the publication of the book of the same name.

Yasuhiro Ogawa

Born in Kanagawa, Japan in 1968. B.A. in English literature from Kanagawa Univ. Japan. He started photography in early twenties and began professional career in 2000.

He has had many solo and group exhibitions including «Futashika na Chizu» at Kodak Photo Salon, Tokyo (1999), «Slowly Down the River» at Nikon Salon Ginza, Tokyo (2006), «The Photographic Society of Japan New Comer Award Memorial Exhibition» at Tokyo and Moscow (2009), «Winter Journey» at Doozo Gallery, Rome, Italy (2013), «Cascade» at Sokyusha Gallery, Tokyo (2017), «By the Sea» at Fuji Film Photo Salon, Tokyo (2018) «Contes des iles et Paysages de la Mer du Japon» at Inbetween Gallery, Paris, France (2018), «The Dreaming» at Blue Lotus Gallery, Hong Kong (2020) and «Into the Silence» & «Dreaming» at Buchkunst Berlin Gallery, (2024).

He has published six photo books so far, such as «Slowly Down the River» (Creo, 2008), «Shimagatari» (Sokyusha, 2014), «Cascade» (Sokyusha, 2017) «By the Sea» (self published, 2018), «The Dreaming» (Sokyusha, 2020) and «Tokyo Silence» (T&M Projects, 2022).

He has won several awards such as the Taiyo Award for his first solo exhibition «Futashikana Chizu» (2000) and The Photographic Society of Japan New Comer Award for his first photo book «Slowly Down the River» (2009). He was a finalist at the Oskar BarnackAward (2006) and the Hayashi Tadahiko Award (2015).

He currently lives in Tokyo.

Text: Thomas Gust, Galerie Buchkunst Berlin