Paris, je t'aime / 109 Rue Mouffetard, 5e Paris, Ver.2024-CP010

Concept

Concept Horiike's works can be categorized into several groups or genres with different perspectives. One group is based on two techniques of expression, monochrome and color. The other group consists of portraits and still-life photographs of street scenes and people passing by, or portraits taken in a studio while manipulating light. In addition to this, there is the "Homage to Atget" series, which uses a mixture of these techniques. For the past 10 years, Horiike has been working on the "Homage to Atget" series as a theme for the latter half of his life. Now, let us briefly describe who "Atget" is. Jean-Eugène Atget was a French photographer born near Bordeaux in 1857 and died in Paris in 1927. He began his photography career in Paris when he was over 40 years old, and recorded the streetscapes of "good old Paris" that were being lost due to the "Great Reform of Paris by Governor Haussmann," which began in the mid-19th century. In Horiike's "Homage to Atget," he actually visited the streets of Paris where Atget had taken his photographs and photographed them from the same angle as Atget. Then, by compositing the works of Atget and myself on a personal computer, Horiike was able to create a work that depicts "the gap between the time Atget and myself photographed," "the relationship between the images I recorded of Atget and his memories of them," and "the 'earth spirits' that remain in the places where Atget photographed, 100 years later," and how I felt about those "earth spirits. How did I feel? Atget photographed the streetscapes of the "good old Paris" and the people of the city, which were gradually disappearing. What is the important thing that he really wanted to "record"? His real intention was not just to photograph the streets and buildings that were being lost, but to leave behind a record that would remind us of the people who lived there and the things that happened around them. I think he was trying to capture the "real image" and "spirit of the land" that emerged from the past as an event of the era in which he lived, rather than just nostalgia for Paris. I feel the change of the "real image" and the "geospirit" in the Parisian landscape that exists today, and in my composite work with Atget's photographs, I will reconstruct a new space by bringing the "geospirit of Paris" of the 21st century to the surface. With these thoughts in mind, he continues to work daily while changing his composite techniques. He has visited Paris six times for a total of about 60 days, and has photographed at more than 200 Agers locations.