Keiichi Tahara - Signed 1st Edition - 1973 - 2016

Everything I perceived, saw and felt was completely new. There was a shaky field of light, completely different from what I had become accustomed to in Japan. It was July 1971 when I finally settled in after the initial excitement of having arrived in Paris. He had regained his calm to observe. The sky was a bluish green hue, somewhat connected to the black hue of outer space. Arrows of light pierced the dry air, closing in on stone buildings. Vicious waves of light. A whole universe that I had never seen before, much less felt, read or imagined. Particles of light jumped into my eyes. I was surprised to learn firsthand that light is, in fact, made of particles. It felt like I could hold it in my hands. That's when my journey into the world of light began. A large number of childhood visual memories suddenly made sense under the concept of light. I had discovered my place in the world. The 1973 narrative begins in the attic of a seven-story, walk-up building in the Parisian student district of Quartier Latin.

The best medium to capture light is film. The best medium to express it is photographic paper. I spent days and nights wandering the streets of Paris and London with my camera. Later, when I held an exhibition in Tokyo, this is what designer Shiro Kuramata wrote in his introduction: Keiichi Tahara opens the shutter twice. Once when you take the photo, once when you develop the film.