Paris Photo 2017: Stand A29

Duo Presentation by Dominique Paul and Yojiro Imasaka

For Paris Photo 2017, MIYAKO YOSHINAGA curated its booth with recent works by two contemporary artists who question the future of our natural environment. While their styles contrast dramatically, they both share a process involving many stages of labor-intensive experiments in order to achieve their final goal.  

Yojiro IMASAKA (b. 1983) employs a classic 8 x 10 camera in densely vegetated woodlands, spending hours observing subtle changes in the primeval scenery. After days of monitoring climate variations, he captures highly-detailed images of a universal landscape on a large format negative. Then, in the darkroom, he performs a delicate toning process that blends a distinctive custom hue to gelatin silver prints. Like an Impressionist, Imasaka’s work reinterprets nature, extracting a final glow from its increasingly eroded state.

Dominique PAUL (b. 1967) creates an intricate collage using magazine cutouts overlaid on 17^th-century “age of discovery” engravings of botanical studies. The resulting fragments of human muscle and industrial commodities entangle and unite with flowers, stems, and insects in metamorphoses in the background. Paul then photographs the whole with light refracted through a disposable plastic bottle. The result is a hybrid mandala that critically reflects a human-centric society relentlessly consuming its limited natural resources.

Thousands of years of evolving nature compromised by the progressive pace of human activity are our artists’ inspiration and concerns. Imasaka and Paul’s aesthetically and technically dissimilar works nevertheless interweave and create a dialogue with each other.

Yojiro IMASAKA is from Hiroshima, Japan, and he lives and works in New York, USA. His work is in the permanent collection of Minneapolis Institute of Art. Dominique PAUL is a native of Montreal, Canada, and works both in Canada and USA. This year, her work was featured on the cover of Photograph, an American photography magazine. We represent both artists and have mounted solo exhibitions of their work several times.