“Everybody kept telling me: «I was useless» so I dropped everything and moved to Berlin to pursue my dream: photography.”
Satoshi Fujiwara, born 30 years ago in Kobe, started his career as photographer in 2012 when he quit his job in Japan and decided to move to Berlin. About his previous work experience in Japan, Satoshi says: “I worked for a Japanese design company for five years, and everybody kept on telling me that I was totally useless! So I decided to drop everything to pursue my dream: photography. I chose Berlin because my favorite photographers are two Germans: Thomas Ruff and Thomas Demand.”
Today it is clear that the decision paid of – it is only five years since he left Japan but his work has already achieved international recognition thanks to a portfolio of several prestigious collaborations, beginning with a portrait t-shirt collection for Issey Miyake, and followed by a sensational add campaign for Deutsche Opera Berlin in 2016.
When asked what his final aim as a photographer is, Satoshi replies: “I want to create a new aesthetic. Unlike fine art, photography has a short history, however it has lots of specific codes that often influence many contemporary photographers. I want to feel free from and break these schemes; I want to ‘squeeze’ the images, crush them, manipulate them and confer them with violence, their visual force”.
Satoshi’s style is therefore extremely peculiar because he takes distances from contemporary documentary photography aiming to create a new language, capable of shifting the observer’s point of view.
In his photo series, called “Code Unknown”, for example, Satoshi took numerous portraits of Berliners traveling on the train. He shot portraits of Berlin subway passengers without their knowledge justifying this act by claiming the work to be a commentary on portraiture. In order to publish pictures without rights issues, Satoshi usually edits them by using digital post-production processes like cropping and reframing until the pictures reach the limit of recognizability.
Taken out of context, his photos convey a jarring and strong image, and it is almost impossible for the viewer to figure out where and when they were taken. Satoshi’s signature close-ups make the images practically unrecognizable, depriving them of the possibility for storytelling.
Satoshi says “I understood that by changing the context, I can also change the meaning of the image. So I decided to divide my photo series into sections and create other content. I have done many series and they are all being exhibited in Milan until mid-October. ”
The exhibition – called “EU” – is being held at the Observatory of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele by the Prada Foundation.
The show is divided into two sections: on the lower floor there is and installation called “5K Confinement”, commissioned by the Prada Foundation in 2016. This piece of art is part of a photographic reportage, called the Cippini Project, where the photographer uses different cameras – from smart phone ones to professional ones – in order to analyze the stress experienced by people who know they are being observed: a topic of great relevance in contemporary Orwellian societies.
The second floor hosts a retrospective of his more recent photographic series, including “#R”, which is a deconstructionalist representation of the conflict between police and activists, and “THE FRIDAY: A report on a report” (2015). A meta-photographic reportage that immortalizes the horde of reporters who descended on Paris during the terror attacks there, as well as scenes from amateur football matches, or from the sex fair in Berlin. In these various projects, Satoshi has dismantled the context to give new meaning to the images.
The exhibition in Milan was designed by curator Luigi Alberto Cippini, and is a sequence of snapshots without any linear narrative context, coupled with Fujiwara’s photographic material.
The photography comes out of the classic two-dimensionality of the screen and the framed print, and appropriates large PVC sheets on which the shots have been reproduced. Attached to the walls with industrial metallic fixtures, the canvas drapes down to the floor in an impressive manner — a bold and original choice that plays a key role in the outstanding work of this provocative Japanese photographer.
Description & Interview: Sara Waka
Edited by: Elisa Da Rin
Photo: Satoshi Fujiwara, Ivan Grianti
