GIRI GIRI  -  Japan

This series is a play on the images conveyed by Japan through different societal archetypes: geisha, robots, dolls, salarymen, kimonos, yakuzas, sumos, etc. These are the images on which the exotic Western imagination has been built for a century and a half, following the opening up of Japan at the end of the 19th century during the Meiji era – whose name is derived from the kanji „light“, the foundation of photography. It is also a play on the concept of photographic truth in the fluctuating relationship that a documentary work can establish with fiction. As filmmaker Chris Marker wrote, „Inventing Japan is just another way of getting to know it“.