Friday, January 23, 2015

Holli Turner - Weekly Artist Post

Haruhiko Kawaguchi






Haruhiko Kawaguchi finds couples in nightclubs or bars that are willing to be vacuum-sealed for his photographs.  The couples embrace on the floor as close as possible while a long white tube attached to a vacuum is inserted into the bag.  All of the air is removed while the photographer counts down from ten to stand on a box to snap the photo.  The photographer makes use of the flash on the camera perhaps to show the creases and areas of suction in the bag.


The artist wants to visually show the intimate “closeness” these couples share.  He is expressing a different way to view couples as being “one” with each other.  In these photographs they are packed so tightly that from a quick glance they can be viewed as one person.


I initially thought that the images were edited completely adding the vacuum-wrap digitally.  I responded with a bit of fear or nervousness viewing the images as well as a video displaying the process.  These are living people that have allowed the photographer to place them in a claustrophobic setting while slowing removing their air.  That is a frightening thought but yet a unique idea that yielded well composed photographs.

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