青幻舎 SEIGENSHA Art Publishing

From early 2020, Covid-19 spread rapidly throughout the world, forcing people to drastically reduce contact with others and confine themselves to the limited space of their homes. Photographer Mikiya Takimoto saw all of his commercial shoots and advertising work, typically involving large groups of people, cancelled. Not only that, he was no longer able to pursue his usual style of art photography, which until then had called for elaborate setups in far-flung corners of the world.

During that time, Takimoto happened to spot some tiny rapeseed flowers blooming on a riverbank. Sensing the same powerful force of nature in them that he had felt from the Earth while working in inhospitable remote regions, he began taking photos of these and other unassuming wildflowers in his daily surroundings. Over the next three years he captured successive moments in the enduring life of flowers and grasses and explored the “microcosm” harbored therein, giving shape to a series that he named Lumière (French for “light”).

In fall 2020 Takimoto also participated in the Kyotographie international photography festival, where he learned the Buddhist phrase en’yu, meaning the integrality of all things completely in harmony, and encountered temple architecture and gardens that brimmed with tranquility. This experience gave him the feeling of a connection with the flow of time, from hundreds and thousands of years ago up to the present, and inspired him to keep visiting and photographing several temples. Thus a second series, Prière (French for “prayer”), was born.

Now, both series are available to readers in books created through the finest attention to paper and printing. High-quality Vent Nouveau paper is used throughout for printability and texture—attributes that are both sought after, but often all too hard to achieve together. The cover is cloth with pasted paper and metal-foil print. The printing, meanwhile, adds gloss to the standard four CMYK colors so as to convey the true image of Takimoto’s works to the greatest extent possible.

These are Takimoto’s first collections of all-new photographs in around ten years, and together they evoke the cycle of life and the coexistence of living things and the Earth.

Includes essays by independent scholar Mao Morita (Lumière) and literary critic Reiji Ando (Prière)
Published by MT Gallery; distributed by Seigensha

Mikiya Takimoto was born in 1974 and started as an independent photographer in 1998 after studying under Tamotsu Fujii. He is active in many fields, including ad photography and commercials, and has published and exhibited his work extensively both in Japan and overseas. Major series include Bauhaus Dessau (2005), Sightseeing (2007), Land Space (2013), Le Corbusier (2017), and Chaos (2018).