HANON

Yoshinori Mizutani continuously captures ordinary scenes of daily life from a unique perspective. From 2014 to 2016, he held solo exhibitions in galleries around the world, including ibasho gallery in Antwerp, aura gallery in Beijing, Chirstophe Guye Galerie in Zurich, and Webber Gallery in London. His work is increasingly praised both domestically and internationally.

Mizutani’s new series, a follow up to his “Tokyo Parrots” series, through which he rapidly received recognition, captures great cormorants, which have exploded in population in the suburbs of Tokyo. Unlike his previous works, this series appears nearly monotone despite being shot in color. He has captured the urban landscape, which has become peculiar due to the presence of these birds, in very graphic compositions that transform the landscape into a two dimensional world without perspectival depth.

In Mizutani’s images, flocks of great cormorants perched on the overhead power lines, which are a ubiquitous element of the Tokyo sky, become silhouettes that resemble musical notes on a score.

In fact, the book of the series was titled HANON in reference to the French piano instruction book.

The photographs, which show an imbalance between the huge flocks of great cormorants and their surrounding environments, constitute, in a sense, a warning to contemporary society. At the same time, however, the black birds also resembled musical notes and seemed to play beautiful melodies in the sky.

– Yoshinori Mistuni