PRIÈRE

As a limited time offer, you will receive a postcard "PRIÈRE" .

In early 2020, COVID-19 infections exploded around the world, forcing humanity to drastically reduce contact with others and to confine ourselves to restricted areas, like our homes. While Mikiya Takimoto’s professional life has been in photography, he too of course stopped work across the board, including advertisements and video commercials involving large numbers of people, and was no longer able to engage in his usual creative work where he flew around the world and filmed and photographed with large pieces of equipment. Having participated in an international photography festival in Kyoto in the fall of 2020, Takimoto discovered "enyu" (a Buddhist term referring to all things being united in perfect harmony, not interfering with each other), coming face to face with the architecture and gardens of Kyoto’s temples, so full of tranquility. Feeling he too was connected to the flow of time that had been unfolding to the present from hundreds and thousands of years ago, he visited various temples and compiled a series of photographs called PRIÈRE ("prayer" in French). Please take a look at PRIÈRE, Takimoto’s first new photo collection in about 10 years, which ponders the cycles of life and the coexistence of living things with planet earth.

When I sat for a while on the engawa with my eyes closed, a scene appeared on my retina. This was not something I saw with my eye, but rather something I felt with my body. Or perhaps it was a scene that someone else sitting in the same place had experienced hundreds or thousands of years ago. This was the kind of thing I imagined during my fruitful time there. Where in the world are we living now? As a tiny entity, I trembled for a moment in cosmic time, but at the same time, I sensed something big flowing beautifully through my being as the inquisitive emotion of prière (prayer) rose up within me. For the next three years, I made regular trips to Kyoto in pursuit of these questions.  Mikiya Takimoto ー Afterword of this book.

MT Gallery / 2024 08 / 248pages / 170photographs / 303x223x30mm / ¥12,000+tax / ISBN978-4-86152-967-2 / Contribution : Reiji Ando / Binding : Yuri Suyama / Editor : Kaoru Mori ( SEIGENSHA Art Publishing, Inc. )