I participated in Jinny Street Gallery‘s first exhibition in Tokyo with other 6 great photographers from Jan 15th to Feb 17th, 2023.
Jinny Street Gallery is an exhibition space using small showcases on the street of Jingumae 2-chome in Shibuya, Tokyo. This time, I had a chance to exhibit for a month, so I wanted to do something experimental.
So this is what I did.
I am exhibiting images printed on thermal paper.
As you know, thermal paper is vulnerable to sunlight and heat. This time it’s winter, so I’m not too worried about the heat, but I don’t know how much the sun will affect it.
What was interesting after I started exhibiting was that the paper was curling because of the rain on the second day of the exhibition. But on the third day, the paper had returned to its original form.
The reason why I chose to print on thermal paper is that I felt that the act of taking a photograph today has lost its ability to record.
As I do, everyone posts their photos on Instagram, but how many photos do you remember you saw and liked today? And can you search for photos you liked a year ago?
The same goes for the pictures we take. With so many photos on your phone, how often do you get to look back at photos you took a year ago unless Google recommends them?
If we have printed photos, we will have chances to look at them when we clean up our room. However, we have a huge amount of images as digital data, and I feel that they are forgotten as soon as we take them.
It’s like sand. If you pick up a grain of sand on the beach and put it back on the beach again, will you be able to find that grain of sand?
Last year my grandmother passed away. And when I was cleaning out her house, I found a lot of photos.
The photos included my own childhood photos, my grandmother’s wedding photos, my mother’s childhood photos, and so on.
It goes without saying that if we print photos, we can show our children and grandchildren about the scenes in the photos. That’s why I keep printing.
