落合陽一写真展「裸性と身体性」

The naked is usually more beautiful than the clothed. This was the first thing I noticed when I started shooting nudes. I rarely take portraits because I usually take only landscapes and snapshots with my Leica. Looking back at my past solo exhibitions, I rarely photograph people as the main subject. It is a surprise that I even thought of photographing human beings, but I am interested in the human form and try to find the ubiquity of human beings, which is probably something that was weakened or newly acquired in Post-Covid19. In the above, he writes as follows.

Yoichi Ochiai continues his journey of thought through observation of digital nature, iteration of art and technology, and practice through research and production. In the Post-Covid19 world of 2020, he continues to explore the relationship between the public and private in digital nature, folk art and spirituality, and agricultural and hunting cultures, as well as thinking about the physical body, festivals, coexistence, intercommunity, environmental impact, transportation, and civilization. Nakedness and materiality, festivity and conviviality, what are the changed values for those of us who have become stationary nomads in the Post-Covid19 society? What is it that I care about in this context?　What arises from this motif?

　I have repeatedly asked this question. Then I had a intuition. To shoot Nudes. I don't know why, but I had a intuition. The journey of life is akin to connecting the dots within the intuition. Now I'm becoming a DJ. I don't have a reason, but I always have an intuition. Every year, I follow my intuition to define my daily acts and explore themes as they transform into words.

For me last year, the intuition was to continue taking nude portraits, the past concept of connecting the dots was that of stationary nomads, and the thought for the future was to think about carbon neutrality and sustainability in the difference between farming and hunting cultures. The process of exploring the reasons for intuition is both a review of context and a dialogue with the self.

Do nesting humans need clothes to be seen? Whether this is a stationary nomad or a digital hermit crab is a matter of great difference in fashion, even if the issues involved are close. What separates the naked from the clothed state can be found in various contrasts, such as public and private, hare and ke, yin and yang, and so on. The nature of nudity is defined and distanced differently in different cultures, but there are few cultures that do not distinguish between the state of being clothed and the state of being undressed. Therefore, nudity, which is a natural state, has some kind of allegory when it is made into a work of art. Has this allegory changed in the Post-Covid19, and is it possible to express a kind of pure beauty without allegory as a media expression with physicality?

While continuing to think in this way, I continued to photograph nudes in an interactive manner. I just looked for light, found light, released the shutter, and repeated the process of trial and error while searching for context about the person. The light is used to strike the skin, to watermark it, and to depict reflections. As we continue our daily routine and continue our journey of thought, we see the world in a different light.

As a result, in exploring the meaning of hunting and gathering in computational nature, starting with the sedentary nomads, I was able to pick up many concepts such as pre-agricultural, Jomon, wood culture, superhumanity, joyous heaven, Nam June Paik, and double-sided Sukuna. If we step out of a society that divides the public and private, and that treats nudity as something special, we might see something different. I will continue to write a series of articles on nudity and physicality, but this exhibition is in a sense an interim report. I would like to thank once again all the staff and models involved in the series and exhibition.