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Lyrical and poetical, the subjects of his studies are reduced to a finite, textural approximation of the original: light and subtlety of shadow configure with a sublime silence as his photographic portrayal of “stillness” of random objects found ashore on the northern periphery of Hokkaido, sheer panels of derelict housing, decaying bulwarks and abandoned wharves denote a spiritual vacuity of time, instances caught in a lens hyper-acute to the gradations of light and fibre which emanate mute histories.

Hiroyuki Togashi is an artist whose perspective is similar to that of philosophical reductivism, beauty is present in the pearlescent luster of seaweed, moss, time-worn wood and plastics born to the erosion of wind and the seas’ relentless appetite for all which is born of humanity and left to be engulfed in the fathomless movement of a sphere without linear time. Passage, experiential transmutation, return and idle “objet’s morte” are compound due to the sensitive and exacting penetration of his visual spectrum. The artists’ deliberations on life and moment, human creation and industry reflect a visceral awareness of environmental conscientiousness: there is a profound aspect of sorrow in a latency which reveals our colossal destruction of the intrinsic beauty of nature.

Recalling the Shinto faith of the artists’ native Japan, reverence for nature and, especially, the importance of the life giving presence of the sun actively echo in minute examinations of the surface and traces of time which the same light draws forth from obscurity whilst refracting from lens to mechanism to becoming captured on the natural textured paper. As though what is poetically photogenic were to have merged with a spiritual photosynthesis, the most outstanding of his photographic oeuvre bear testament to the forgotten and yet, essential, aspect of humility in creation.

Hiroyuki Togashi neither appears in, nor distorts, the captured moment of life: he remains a silent observer faithful in his incognitive instinct to deliver a photographic instance which reveals the tragic, often absurdly tragic, definition of items left to the recklessness of time.

The definite technical merit of the artist is noteworthy. Working with rarely either filters or flash, Togashi invests an exorbitant amount of time to frame, appraise the conditions of available light, and finally, shoot with a deliberate caution against reflection, refraction and mirroring-(illusive yet popular amongst a great many of his generation, equally inspired to one extent of another by such luminaries as Araki or Moriyama), allowing for an intimate confrontation with the simple.

Following several discussions as diverse as the quasi-metaphysical aspects of Zen poetics, the advent of Occidental influences and violence of the centuries past colonial impact on the traditions of Japan, a lucid and sensitive mind is observed at work. A few brief years exposure to the mainstream culture of America, while studying abroad, afforded the artist a simultaneous greater appreciation of the consumerist culture of North America and instinctive revulsion against the predominant corporate culture which abounds in the Californian area. Unable to assimilate, he sought to divest both the cultural ignorance engrained from his insular native Japan, and expansive cataclysm which “America” often subjects individuals. Cultural dichotomies and xenophobic speculations within the artist have today delivered a sincere and direct opposition to what the artist interprets as “falsehood”, or the “irreal”.

Less vehement than known at the time of it’s’ instigation, the tendency towards “truth” is currently more a pursuit of method than ideological revolt. Evidently, indications of subversive humour exist in the yet still young artist, whom appears neither cynical nor optimistic in his approach to his calling as a photographer, nor as a casual observer of an era which seems overwhelmingly escapist in its ignorance of unprecedented environmental ruin. He laughs with a similar laughter of a mad priest; with wisdom, insight and humility.

It is perhaps due all the more to his interests in traditional spiritual and philosophical traditions, for all their dogma and frailties in face of the contemporary onslaught of dialectal materialism, the senseless justification of militaristic force over human reason- we might recall the artist is of the generation in whom was instilled the last breath of Cold-War paranoia, paralytic fear of Nuclear destruction, and whom grew virtually immersed in the advent of rapid replication and technological accelerations in the fields of imagery, photographic communication.

The ashes of annihilation are silent, the psyche of the nation still amidst complacence and national conjecture. Togashi Hiroyuki poetic sojourn exploring life’s kinetic and static actuality by means of the lens has proven to be at once luminous and profound, subconsciously navigating shoals defined by intuition and sent by the guidance of an inner voice. He treads upon spectral wastelands of the spirit and derisively issues a visual missive which affirms the words of Daido Moriyama, “…photography is the fossil of light and time.”

R ASuri
Beijing
02/11/2010