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"Taking drawing techniques and lens characteristics into consideration, I try to make images look as natural as possible."
I showed "Ni Hao, Xie Xie", one of my first documentary-type works, at a solo exhibition recently. I don't think it's noticeable at first glance, but the image has been subtly processed. The girl's face, for example, has been processed to remove the deformation that is a characteristic of extremely wide-angle lenses, while those same lens characteristics are left untouched in the background. The resulting image has a strikingly natural look.
In other works, I've applied the technique of "atmospheric perspective," where objects further away appear bluer than objects nearby. Although impossible to capture with conventional techniques, the resulting images look as natural as what you see with your own eyes.
Atmospheric perspective is actually a technique used in painting, so in "Ni Hao, Xie Xie" I also took lens characteristics into account to achieve a more natural appearance. When I process images digitally, I deconstruct them into their component parts, and then take a deep breath and try to create the final image in a single smooth creative flow. If I don't approach it this way, I find I become indecisive and I can't achieve the correct overall balance. The real knack to creating natural images, though, is knowing when to stop processing before you go too far.
I refer to my digital works as "images," rather than "photographs," and so I titled the solo exhibition that included the "Ni Hao, Xie Xie" piece, "Yosuke Ito Image Exhibition." Although traditional photographs can be extremely expressive, even eloquent, there is often some element that needs to be explained. With digital imaging, my aim is to create strong, deeply impressive works that require no explanation. In other words, I want to use images to express something that words cannot. It is a daunting challenge, but it brings out something mischievous in me, and I really enjoy myself. As well as continuing to experiment with documentary-type works, I'd like to try working in various other genres in the future.
Editor's Note
Yosuke Ito's original ambition to become a graphic designer seems clearly evident in his works. And although he speaks of inspiration as simply the product of a mischievous mind, his conversation also referenced philosophers such as Wittgenstein, Sartre and Husserl in his conversation, giving me a glimpse of the rich imagination that informs his actions and art.
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