I was at Michael Hoppen Gallery yesterday and had the chance to see the work of Japanese photographer Hiromi Tsuchida. I was particular excited to see a series of exhibition prints from his book Counting Grains of Sand (Published: Tosei-Sha, May 2005).

Born in Fukui Prefecture in 1939 Tsuchida studied engineering before enrolling in the Tokyo College of Photography in 1965 where he was later to return as a professor. He began his career as a publicity photographer for a cosmetics company but quickly decided to become a freelance photographer in 1971. Tsuchida began Counting Grains of Sand in the second half of the 1970s and the series explores how the Japanese people interact and function in a crowd, with each person a ‘grain of sand’. He decided to stop working on the series in 1989, when the ‘crowd to end all crowds’ came to mourn the death of Emperor Hirohito. However, during the 1990s he began work on the series again as he was struck by the shifting dynamic of the crowd in the today’s Japan. Crowds were no longer seas of people but had become a network of small groups that maintained a certain distance from each other.

Untitled, Tokyo © Hiromi Tsuchida, 1996

Untitled, Gotemba © Hiromi Tsuchida, 2002

Untitled, Tottori © Hiromi Tsuchida, 2002

Untitled, Tokyo © Hiromi Tsuchida, 2003

Tsuchida attempts to express the changes in Japanese culture and society through his work, analyzing the distance within crowds and the clash between tradition and modernity that structures Japanese society. His photographs have been described as “the intersection between the individual and the communal, within the global context of urbanization and consumerism.” And it has been said that his work highlights the “unification brought about by the sacred and the profane within the context of a society with this dual structure. Doing so he captures a universal element that exists outside of time and indifferent to western influences.”

His vivid use of colour give the images an almost hyper-real quality and help convey a sense of claustrophobia while at the same time the crowds seem very ordered.

You can see a few more of Tsuchida’s work on Artnet here.

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