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Hiroshi Kamakura"For me photography is not about capturing an object that was reflected in my retina, but about revealing that invisible something beyond what my eyes perceived."
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| FRAGMENT # 6 ©1998 | by Hiroshi Kamakura |
Hiroshi Kamakura's rise to prominence as a fine arts photographer can be considered nothing short of meteoric. Born in Japan in 1968, he graduated with a degree in commercial science from Tokyo's Keio University in 1992 and was drawn to photography after seeing the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Joel-Peter Witkin, and Nobuyoshi Araki.
What makes Kamakura's work even more astonishing, is that it is done on an inexpensive Olympus C800L digital camera, which is the same model introduced two years ago in the U.S. as the D300L. With a resolution of 1024x768, a fixed-focal length lens of 36mm, and no memory card storage, the camera can hardly be considered professional strength. Yet it once again proves that cameras don't take good pictures, people do.
After shooting a maximum of about 30 images, Kamakura returns to his PowerMac 6200/75 with 64MB of RAM, and uploads images the old fashioned way, through its slow serial port. Then the creative process begins as Photoshop 4.0.1 is called into action.
| FRAGMENT # 51 ©1998 | by Hiroshi Kamakura |
Says Kamakura: "I manipulate the image by using only one filter in Photoshop to add a shading off effect in order to bring it most close to the image which I saw by not sight but feelings." The resulting impressionistic photographs make a powerful impact with their simple design elements and carefully calculated use of color.
When he is satisfied that the image on his monitor is exactly what he wants, Kamakura sends the digital file out to a service bureau where a LightJet film recorder is used to make a 40-line base conversion to a 35mm color transparency. Conventional 10 x12 inch photographic prints are then made for display at exhibitions, and for sales by galleries.
Hiroshi Kamakura lives and works in Chiba, Japan, and finished a successful two-week personal exhibition of his work in early November at the prestigious Steam Gallery in Nagoya. He may be contacted directly or through his U.S. representative.
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