Taku Aramasa: Sakura

Taku Aramasa: Sakura at Stephen Wirtz Gallery. "...Presented in Sakura are black and white pinhole photographs of the glorious displays of blooming cherry trees at the time of Sakura Matsuri, the annual cherry blossom festival in Japan. Aramasa employs the pinhole process for this series, a primitive photographic technique that functions like a miniature camera obscura, where light passes through tiny opening in a lensless camera and registers the image directly on film. The considered choice of this basic photographic method with its inherent immediacy reflects Aramasa's desire to directly mirror his experience of this spectacular event in nature. The images are soft rather than sharp, due to the lack of a focusing lens and the long exposures required, and this resulting 'blurriness' and distortion lends an effect of delirious motion to the imagery as the ephemeral blossoms fall from the trees and dust the landscape."