Location: Villa Bottini, via Elisa 9
Orari: Lunedì – Domenica 10:00 – 19:30
PHOTOBOOX AWARD 2022 – YUSUKE TAKAGI: SPIN
curated byEva-Maria Kunz
in collaboration with L’Artiere Edizioni
Takagi’s father was hospitalized for alcoholism two and a half years ago. In the artist’s memory, the father has always been an alcoholic.
After hospitalization, the diagnosis of senile dementia was made due to an abnormal brain atrophy due to excessive alcohol consumption that made it necessary to move to a residential health facility for about eight months: not being aware of his condition, in fact, once home, he could start drinking again.
“My father was consumed by alcohol, which creeping into the emptiness of her mind, devastated her, devastating her body as well,” Takagi says. “Having an alcoholic father forced me to confront the human weakness, sadness and emptiness of life. Looking at my past with him means reliving memories and still unresolved emotions that I carry with me from childhood: loneliness, sense of guilt, alienation. Now that I am a father, I have an unfathomable fear that what happened to me could also happen to my son. The thought that my son has to face the terrible situations I have experienced devastates me; the word chain haunts me like a ghost. Both my father, who is an alcoholic, and I, who grew up with him, have a void in our heart that cannot be borne. ”
Each of us has a void in our heart, somewhere. Each of us could potentially take refuge in alcoholism to fill that void. Takagi’s work starts from this reflection, and with this project he approaches his father with compassion, looking at that void without judgment. “My father’s recovery was an extremely complicated path”, concludes the artist. “With my son we are working together to free ourselves from that sort of spell that makes us feel trapped in an inescapable chain of events.”
Also on display are the finalist projects, in the form of a paper dummy:
Alejandra Arevalo, A cloud above me
Ilana Bar, Transparencias de lar
Javier Arcenillas, Latidoamerica
Quetzal Maucci, Piccoli baci
Sina Niemeyer, The Many Wives of Mr.Lippka
Steffi Drerup, Ichfolgedesseni
Yoshikatsu Fujii, Hiroshima Graph/Everlasting Flow
The book, edited by Eva-Maria Kunz, published by L’Artiere Edizioni with the contribution of Photolux Festival will be presented in Lucca on Saturday 28 May 2022 at 5pm.
Yusuke Takagi
(Tokyo, Japan, 1979)
After graduating from Meiji Gakuin University with a degree in sociology, he began working as a freelance photographer in 2005. In 2010 he won the Human Rights Award in the FCCT / OnAsia PHOTO CONTEST 2010 with a project on human trafficking in Myanmar.
In the wake of the great earthquake that devastated Japan in 2011, his research focused on Japanese society. The project that chronicles the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster from a father’s perspective won the Special Prize at the 2017 FUAM Istanbul Photobook Dummy Award and was published by AKINA Books in 2018 under the title Kagerou. The book was selected by TIME magazine among the best photography books of 2018.
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PHOTOBOOX AWARD 2022
The fourth edition of the PhotoBoox Award is promoted by Photolux in collaboration with L’Artiere Edizioni.
The call for entry – free and open to all photographers, photographers and photographic collectives, professional and non, of any nationality – saw a large participation, with over 200 applications received from all over the world.
The international jury of the 2022 edition is composed of: Irene Attinger, independent curator; Ana Casas Broda, founder of Hydra + Fotografía; Yumi Goto, independent curator and founder of Reminders Photography Stronghold; Eva-Maria Kunz, ceiba editions; Gianluca and Gianmarco Gamberini, L’Artiere Edizioni.
L’ARTIERE EDIZIONI
Artiere Edizioni is a young publishing house specializing in photographic volumes with the distinctive feature of the very high quality of its products. The publishing house was founded in 2013 from an idea by Gianluca and Gianmarco Gamberini.
At the base of the experience of L’Artiere Edizioni is Grafiche dell’Artiere, which has passed on to the publishing house a very high level of technical know-how and a great award-winning experience in the field of printing.
EVA-MARIA KUNZ
Eva-Maria Kunz is a book collector, co-founder and artistic director of the independent publishing house ceiba edition. Lives and works in Italy.
