TAKASHI ARAI - Tomorrow's History

TAKASHI ARAI

Tomorrow's History

Takashi Arai, born in Japan in 1978, is a contemporary daguerreotypist who uses this technique to address the nuclear issue, a particularly sensitive subject in a country that has experienced the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and has since faced 2011 the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.

His choice to use the daguerreotype, despite the difficulty of the process, is explained by the symbolic quality of irrefutable testimony he bears. Unique image born from the direct action of light, the daguerreotype has unique qualities: with infinite precision, it really seems to carry the fragile trace of what the plate has "seen", as if a reflection of the world remained trapped in this silver plate and reflecting like a mirror.

This exhibition will bring together about thirty daguerreotypes of various formats (From 6 x 6 cm to 20 x 25 cm), made mainly in the city of Hiroshima. You can see the dome of Genbaku (peace memorial), trees that survived the bomb, but also lively streets of the current city that seem lit by a double sun. By making two exposures of the plate a few minutes apart, Takashi Arai inscribed in the image the place of the sun at the time of the bomb (8h15) and the flash of its explosion.In addition to the images of the city, Takashi Arai made portraits in daguerreotype of young people of Hiroshima18 years old and their dreams today. A short text accompanies each image. The “temporal capsule” of the daguerreotype thus imprisons their present for the story of tomorrow.