In Summer 2019, thirteen students from the ECAL Master’s in Photography programme supervised by Milo Keller travelled to Japan to work on thirteen individual projects in collaboration with Japanese photographer Taisuke Koyama within the framework of the Tokyo Photographic Research project. The students’ artworks range from still and moving images to computer-generated photographic visuals and explore multiple facets of the Japanese megalopolis which is, once again, undergoing major transformation in preparation for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games. Some projects focus on aspects specific to the city, from the destruction of small residential houses to the construction of the gigantic Olympic Village and the conquest of new territories by the sea. Other works investigate distinctive Japanese culture such as home-cooked food, the appetite for designing humanoid robots, the blending of child and adult worlds in manga, pachinko gambling, the reinvention of ikebana and young girls as ‘rising stars.’ Finally, the works seek to visually represent more abstract concepts such as loneliness, emptiness and intimacy in a city that, due to its density, size and power, offers a challenging, fascinating and extremely stimulating complexity to the eyes of the thirteen photographers. Higurashi has been presented at Espace Commines in Paris in November 2021, inside the exhibition Automated Photography during Paris Photo.
Photography Students
Emidio Battipaglia
Robin Bervini
Jasmine Deporta
Anja Karolina Furrer
Alessia Gunawan
Christian Harker
Jung-Ting Hu
Johanna Hullár
Philipp Klak
Doruk Kumkumoglu
Igor Pjörrt
Jelly Luise
Gedvile Tamosiunaite
Higurashi is available at ecal-shop.ch.
Milo Keller
Taisuke Koyama
Florain Amoser
Calum Douglas
Thomas Le Provost
Craft by ECAL/Benoit Brun & Raphaël De la Morinerie
ITC Garamond Std
Jonas Pulver
Maxline Stettler
ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne
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