omen

project

This project is an activity of the pottery artist Yukimi Kikuchi creating a scene of an fictional ethnic figure wearing a ceramic mask and the photographer Shinko Tsujimoto provided the photography.
By the expression that arises from each perspective of pottery and photography, and from each other’s world and idea colliding and sometimes mixing, we want to witness the moment when a new ethnic life starts moving, so this work is in progress with such thoughts.

story

This project started from a desire to distill unnecessary choices.

First, it was necessary to let go of one's perceptions that are taken for granted.
In order to achieve the emptiness of the mind, one must .

Like a child that goes into the mountains and discovers the time of his life,
I grabbed my mask and camera and playedwith the same intensity.

They lure me to come closer.
The tribe we created is the essence of our new selves.

I can get even closer.
So I kept taking pictures.

Photographer Shinko Tsujimoto

Ms. Kikuchi’s motivation for making the Mask was a feeling of “longing”.
Longing for the unknown world, longing for the nonexistent world, longing for the past, longing for the future.
Firstly, she created her world of longing from the face, “Toujinmen” and put a world view into the face.
The Toujinmen plays the role of being like an entrance to the world of longing.

The Toujinmen has been made more as an object to be worn on the face rather than being a decorative object.
Right from the beginning it seems she made it naturally with that intention.
The Mask was completed and the work was over. However, that was not the end.
After the completion of the Mask it was the beginning of the true expression of Toujinmen.

Potter  Yukimi Kikuchi

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Shinko Tsujimoto
  • Photographer
  • Born in Wakayama / based in Osaka, Japan

Starting from her late teens, Shinko Tsujimoto began taking pictures from the sidelines while working on various jobs for commercial photoshoots, exhibition productions or events. Her images soon gets noticed and she becomes a dedicated set photographer for movie productions. With this experience, Shinko joins a studio to become an assistant, thus beginning her career as a photographer.

2017 - present
Launches a collaboration project with the ceramicist Yukimi Kikuchi titled ‘古来陶面新民族’

2014 - present
Begins a freelance practice focused on editorial, advertising and product photography while periodically conducting studio portrait sessions ‘Portrait with Frame Works’

Awards
2009 MIO Photo Award finalist
2006 - 2007 Awarded ESQUIRE Japan Digital Photography Award
(Taka Ishii Juror’s Award)

Yukimi Kikuchi

From her childhood Ms. Kikuchi grew up surrounded by many paintings and movies.
She was interested in the world of light and shadow, and from when she was a teenager, she was involved in video work with responsibility for lighting.
After that, her interest shifted to the momentary world and she turned to photography.
She became strongly attracted to press photography and worked on her photography, but it took time for her to find her own form of expression, so she explored that for a while traveling for a few years.
In an unexpected turn of events, she happened upon pottery, and from that day, she has never touched a camera only clay.
She was supposed to be looking for her own form of expression, but without realizing it she made many objects, and she felt freer and freer.
The thing to be expressed is mainly the “face”, and that became today’s “Potter’s Mask” (or her so-called Toujinmen.)

She held a “Toujinmen” exhibition at Kurakuen galere6c in Nishinomiya in 2017.
At the time of the exhibition, she took the opportunity to shoot Toujinmen with models, and launched her current projects.

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