COLLAGE-LIKE PHOTOS CELEBRATE QUIET BEAUTY IN THE EVERYDAY

by Edward M. Gómez


This year, Tokyo experienced a summer marked by on-again, off-again sunshine or on-again, off-again rain, depending on how one chose to measure Mother Nature’s mercurial temperament. What’s dry was wet, and what’s wet was dry.

Similarly, the young artist Soshi Matsunobe, who was born in 1988 and lives and works in Shiga Prefecture, in southwestern Japan, confounds viewers with his clever mixing-up of negative and positive photographic images in the making of his collage-like pictures. In addition, often he purposefully mutes the contrast of his black-and-white images to give them a soft, meditative character. His photographic works can feel energetic, calm and calming, and beguiling, all at the same time.