Halo: Rinko Kawauchi

(photographs and text)

Halo was a very intriguing project not only in ints contents but in its presentation. Kawauchi's images are captured in large double page spreads in a book just slightly larger than A4, black pages peppering the in-between spaces until the reader comes to the final pages, upon which there is a single poem and a page of creative writing that informs you of the meaning of the photographs, and the inspiration for 'Halo'. 

I like how the viewer has to experience the photographs first before the text, allowing them a chance to draw their own conclusions and unable them to make preconceptions in terms of the artist's intentions. 

The poem that accompanies Halo is abstract, descriptive, and perfectly accompanies the blurry, shimming quality of Kawauchi's photography, both recognisable and unknown subject matter that plays with light and the beautiful consistency of shape.

A purposefully blurry images of birds scattering from the bare branches of a tree, shaking the branches so much so that they cannot be still and thus Kawauchi can capture the new hazy shapes, only for a few seconds as the birds take flight into the sky.

 Kawauchi often refers back to the elements, of rain and dust, and man-made elements also, such as cast iron. I think he sees the link between this production of particles, how they move similarly, almost ephemeral. Captured on camera, as he demonstrates above, such small, missable elements can sparkle and demonstrate to us the true hidden beauty of the universe is quite literally all around us. 

Kawauchi, R. (2017). Halo. Turkey: Ofset Yapimevi.