honorable mention
Eriko Kaniwa japanPhoto © Eriko Kaniwa
title
Floating Sanctuary
Kaniwa spent two years exploring the symbols of Japanese nature worship, after the period of TV program production and the social ventured innovation, which are exemplified in the so-called "eight million of gods" of Shinto. She reflected on how the ancient Japanese viewed their natural surroundings and symbolized it as an object of prayer. Traveling to over twenty locations throughout Japan, she captured images of torii gates built in water, sacred wedded rocks, world heritage sites, and other spiritual landscapes. These images are collected, together with text, in her book "JOKEI - Symbols of Nature Worship, Sacred Places of Japan", which has won multiple international awards as the one of the best fine art photo books in the world. In addition to this book, her other works have received multiple international awards, including PX3, ND Awards, Sony World Photography Awards, IPA, and more.
Also she creates digitally enhanced abstract artwork based on her unique philosophy. Her work has been displayed at galleries in London and New York, as well as at the art fairs and international exhibitions such as Fotofever Paris and Barcelona Foto Biennale. Her artworks has been seen or featured in the magazines such as British GQ, London Life Magazine, Wired, and OPENEYE, NY-ART News and more.
While embracing her great concern over the planet's ongoing sixth mass extinction, she is actively exploring whether it is possible to incorporate these issues into her creative concepts.
WEBSITE : https://sensegraphia.jp
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entry description
Since ancient times, torii shrine gates in Japan have symbolized the boundary marking the threshold of sacred ground. It is believed that the practice of torii construction based on bird worship dates back to the Yayoi period (around the 5th century BCE). In the case of torii built in water, they are often constructed on top of small islands in a sea or lake or off the tip of a cape, on protruding rocks, or amid other landscape elements that draw the eye. Our ancestors who lived on the Japanese archipelago, surrounded by seas, must have sensed divinity in the slightly extraordinary elements of an otherwise ordinary landscape. They built torii in these places, and in doing so began a prayer that has continued across generations, for safe oceangoing journeys and fishing expeditions, for abundant harvests of the sea’s bounty. Torii are not only the gates we pass through when visiting a shrine; those that stand within the natural landscape function as symbols of awe and piety toward nature’s power that have shaped the spirit of the Japanese people throughout history. The reason I feel both piety and spiritual calm when I see a torii rising from the water is, I believe, because this is an elemental landscape for the Japanese, a symbol of stopping in the midst of our busy lives, and looking and offering up a prayer to nature. It is the real landscape that is the foundation for the imagined landscapes we see in our mind’s eye. I believe this is perhaps the prehistoric source of the Japanese concept of spirituality that we call the Eight Million Gods—the belief, appearing even now in modern films such as those by Studio Ghibli, that divinity can be found even in a mote of dust.about the photographer
Eriko Kaniwa is an international award-winning photographic digital artist based in Tokyo, and the creator of Sensegraphia fine art.Kaniwa spent two years exploring the symbols of Japanese nature worship, after the period of TV program production and the social ventured innovation, which are exemplified in the so-called "eight million of gods" of Shinto. She reflected on how the ancient Japanese viewed their natural surroundings and symbolized it as an object of prayer. Traveling to over twenty locations throughout Japan, she captured images of torii gates built in water, sacred wedded rocks, world heritage sites, and other spiritual landscapes. These images are collected, together with text, in her book "JOKEI - Symbols of Nature Worship, Sacred Places of Japan", which has won multiple international awards as the one of the best fine art photo books in the world. In addition to this book, her other works have received multiple international awards, including PX3, ND Awards, Sony World Photography Awards, IPA, and more.
Also she creates digitally enhanced abstract artwork based on her unique philosophy. Her work has been displayed at galleries in London and New York, as well as at the art fairs and international exhibitions such as Fotofever Paris and Barcelona Foto Biennale. Her artworks has been seen or featured in the magazines such as British GQ, London Life Magazine, Wired, and OPENEYE, NY-ART News and more.
While embracing her great concern over the planet's ongoing sixth mass extinction, she is actively exploring whether it is possible to incorporate these issues into her creative concepts.
WEBSITE : https://sensegraphia.jp
back to gallery