honorable mention
Eriko Kaniwa japan
title
Water Vein
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
"The earth's blood is the veins of the waters." ---Leonardo da Vinci. Each individual waterfall in Japan embodies the creation of the Japanese archipelago, and in more extreme terms, the story of Earth since its birth. The water that overflows without cease from the womb of the Earth takes on a multitude of forms depending on the form and nature of the rock below it. The rock, too, changes its form as a result of erosion caused by weathering and the energy of the water flowing over it. The reason that I—and all of us—are drawn to waterfalls and mountain streams lies without a doubt in the fact that the energy that molds nature moves so forcefully in these places, benefiting life all throughout our planet. For the humans who were our ancestors, the landscape was literally a lifescape that they depended upon to survive. As da Vinci said, it is difficult to separate the flow of rivers on Earth’s surface from the flow of blood within our bodies; our ancestors most likely sensed instinctively the same connection expressed in the visual form of plants and lightning and other natural phenomena. In other words, the patterns inscribed in their ceramics were perhaps also expressions of their own bodies. I arrived at a point where I wanted to capture once again the ways in which, living in an era without science, technology, or precision computing, our ancestors saw the natural landscape, intuited its formative energy, and attempted to understand it, express it, and communicate with it. I also wanted to capture the kind of world we are living in today through waterscape in Japan.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