torikumo Haruka Fujita

Torikumo, taken from the seasonal word “tori kumo ni iru [birds enter clouds]”, refers to how migratory birds disappear far away in the clouds as they return to the north in springtime.

Depicting her hometown in Tohoku in her series soundless river and capturing snowy landscapes without specifying a location in her series winter, photographer Haruka Fujita has been fixing her gaze on the subjects, examining her distance with the subjects, and fixating them in the medium of photography.

In this ambitious work torikumo, Fujita uses her photographs to portray the traditional themes of natural beauty in Japanese aesthetics as they have been painted on papered sliding screens and folding screens.

She took photographs of sliding screens gilded with gold and silver leaf, which she acquired at an art supply store, and printed them on photographic papers as the base of the work. She then captured harsh but beautiful nature and animals such as flowers, trees and birds with 4×5 film and layered the images on the already printed photographic papers. Hand-printed in the darkroom, each piece was created by chance and on-the-spot discoveries such as the nuances in contrasts and textures. The composition of the finished work incorporates the characteristics of blank spaces in sliding screen paintings, and the multiple layers of colour tones based on dark colours also resemble paintings that have existed over a long period of time.

Bound with accordion style, all pages are connected to each other, making the photobook similar to a picture scroll.