Canary by Lieko Shiga (March 31, 2010) 
(32 votes, average: 3.72 out of 5)
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Categories / Conceptual Photography / / Click here to open comments section, click again when done to close / 1 Comment
Introduction by Marc Feustel
Lieko Shiga is one of a growing number of interesting young female photographers that have been emerging in Japan in recent years. However, Shiga’s series Canary stands in stark contrast to a lot of the work being produced by her contemporaries. She foregoes the reality of daily existence and surface identity to enter a strange parallel universe of intense visual hallucinations, turning herself into a photographer of the subconscious or the supernatural. Using multiple exposures and darkroom processing to transform her images, Shiga manages to imbue each of the images in Canary with its own surreal narrative.
Marc Feustel is an independent curator, writer and blogger based in Paris. A specialist in Japanese photography, he is the author of Japan: a self-portrait, photographs 1945-1964 (Flammarion, 2004) and the creative director of Studio Equis (www.studioequis.net), an organisation devoted to broadening access to the visual arts between different cultures, with a focus on the relationship between Asia and the West. He blogs at Weblink: eyecurious.com
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Our poll "A photo essay always needs a great written story" closed. 267 people voted, 28% agrees, 72% disagrees. 233 people answered our follow-up question "Are you a photographer?" 82% indicated they are, 18% said no. Initially, negative answers to question #1 were almost 100% as was the pecentage of photographers among respondants. Then, when the level of non-photographers started to rise, the percentage of people indicating good text is always essential started to rise too. This seems to indicate that non-photographers think that adding good text to your photo essays is essential. In my opinion: if you want non-photographers to dig your work, you know what to do...
Be Shot and Die. The photographic paper is the evidence. The image printed on it had a smell, like something still fresh, as it appeared before my eyes. Time moves forward towards my death, and the act of creating a moment of stationary time, as opposed to passing time, is something akin to prayer.
When photographing, I create a device to produce chance events, waiting to be shot by the camera at a moment that is impossible to predict in order to lose any control over the images I may intentionally hold.
The verb “shoot” is used to describe the action of taking a photograph, but the same word is also used to mean “kill,” therefore to be shot is to be resurrected through the act of killing.
I can already visualize the finished photograph when I first encounter the subject or scene, or even before that. The time that exists before the photograph is taken shoots me where I stand outside and restores me to life.
The body is simply a medium, I kept a canary inside my stomach.
Look upon people or scenery that have been sacrificed through photography as offerings to the next world.
Lieko Shiga (1980) lives and works in .
Click weblink liekoshiga.com or browse our archives
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Posted in category 649
so dreamy and nightmarish (do we say so?) at the same time. so far from my photography and still highly fascinating. Inspiring.