One pilgrimage route.
88 temples
Two journeys.
18 photographs that do not show the path itself, but rather what it leaves behind.
Shikoku is not the Japan that most people know. The smallest of Japan’s four main islands is rugged, tranquil and deeply rooted in its traditions.
For centuries, pilgrims have been walking the 88-temple route, not as tourists, but as seekers.
I walked it in two stages: in 2025 and 2026, on my own, with a backpack, for the first time in my life. A total of just under 950 kilometres.
What the journey offers is not merely comfort. It offers confrontation.
A golden flame beside a dragon on a temple roof. A solitary figure climbs a stone staircase into the silence. A tunnel on the south coast curves out of view; light streams through its open side at regular intervals.
This visual language did not emerge during the journey. It emerged afterwards, whilst working on the book project between the two stages, when it became clear that the tension between the two photographic approaches reflects precisely what the journey itself embodies:
the fluid and the solid, the spiritual and the brutally real.
The series features 18 works - single images, diptychs and triptychs - presented in a non-chronological order.
It follows the rhythm of the journey itself: setting out, pausing, and moving on.
Some places carry more than what is visible. Veils
of light move, shapes perhaps, or what remains of
them. Their lines carry across into the bare branches
of a temple garden, as if two worlds share the same
breath.
A woman climbs a moss-covered stone staircase,
step by step, without hurry. She knows this path.
What came before us here, and who still walks when
we have long moved on, remains an open question.
At a wayside shrine, a figure emerges from stone and
motion. The camera did not capture it, it released it.
Something about this figure does not step back. It is
not decorative, it is present. Since when, one cannot
say.
On Shikoku, such places stand still while
everything around them comes and goes.
Incense sticks burn, their lines rise and dissolve
before you can hold them.
A remote tunnel along the
coast follows its precise curve through concrete and
quiet.
Two places with nothing in common, and yet
they speak the same language. On this path, you do
not find the sacred. It finds you.
On Shikoku, you do not simply enter a temple. You
arrive.
The path stays outside, the steps slow. No
face, no name, only this quiet that arrives when you
stop, just for a moment.
It is not the destination
that carries you. It is the walking.
Shikoku protects itself. The massive concrete blocks
along the shore push back against the surf, heavy,
without grace.
And yet they stand where pilgrims also
walk, where light falls into temple rooms and grasses
move in the wind.
You walk past and do not ask why.
You simply accept it as the island offers it:
without apology, without explanation.
Those who do not look up walk past. The waymark in
the bamboo forest points a direction, that is its
purpose.
The woven offerings in the temple are
gestures of connection. A gesture in a direction no
waymark can show.
On Shikoku, you learn eventually to see both.
The dragon at the roof's edge is not a guardian. It
is movement that has stilled and will not stay still.
What precedes it blazes.
What follows binds.
A different sign, the same impulse.
There are moments in the temple when you are not sure whether you are observing or participating.
One pull on the tassel, and the gong speaks. The space opens. What happens here is older than the walls that contain it.
You enter, and the space welcomes you, inward
and open.
You do not notice it at first. But at some point, you
have arrived, in the middle of walking.
The water that flows wherever you go.
The bamboo swaying in the wind, unyielding.
The companion who accompaniesyou, silent, since the first step.
None of it pushes. The path carries.
It was not a special place. A main road, asphalt,
noise.
And then this grass, right beside it, moving
in the wind.
Light against dark, delicate against
solid.
The path had nothing sacred to offer at that
moment. Only this grass.
At almost every temple gate, he stands. A guardian,
gesture raised, unmistakable.
You get used to it, walk past.
Until one day he speaks to you directly. What he asks is not much.
Only the pause before you enter.
The path continues. But here, briefly, something
gathers.
Solid ground that is not always there.
An ember not yet spent.
A stillness that holds.
What was is still close. What comes is waiting.
Where something comes from, what it set in motion,
what remains.
The path has no end that can be seen.
Every step on the pilgrim path is one's own. But
does that mean one walks alone?
Along the way, figures stand still, waiting. A silent, ever-present companionship.
The individual falls into something larger that was always there.
You walk and are walked.
The trees stand in a row and reveal nothing.
Those who only walk do not see the turtle in the wall. It has been there for a long time, unhurried.
The path eventually teaches you to slow down.
What settles, what arches, what repeats.
Bridges are not only made of stone.
There are moments on the path when one senses that something has been set in motion.
Not the steps one takes. Something far deeper.
Being underway is not a state, but a process that continues long after the last step has been taken.
The last image.
No conclusion, no arrival.
Only this one sign in the fog, transmitting without knowing who receives.
The path continues, even after you have stopped walking.
All 18 photographs are available as limited-edition original prints. Individual prints and triptychs. Each work is produced in an edition of 1/1, plus a maximum of 2 artist’s proofs.
Minimum size: 80 cm long edge; printing on museum-quality substrates by WhiteWall.
Prices from €850.
Individual production and personalised advice available on request.
Shikoku . Fragmented Worlds
The Pier Mainz, Mainz
May - August 2026
7 works in the series.
Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles OFF 2026
Galerie Les Murs Blancs
July 2026
as part of a group exhibition organised by ProfiFoto
2 works in the series.
The series combines two photographic approaches that could hardly be more different.
Intentional camera movement combined with optical filters dissolves the concrete, making movement visible where the eye has long since moved on.
Classic black-and-white photography captures the essence of the moment:
Form, light, silence.
This combination wasn’t planned from the outset. It emerged whilst working on the book project between the two stages of the pilgrimage, when it became clear that it was only by juxtaposing the two approaches that one could truly understand what Shikoku is all about.
All the images were captured in-camera. No digital post-processing of the movement was carried out.
What you see was created at the moment the photograph was taken.
Alongside the series, an artist’s book on Shikoku is being produced in collaboration with Wolfgang Zurborn.
It combines ICM photography with traditional black-and-white photography and further develops the visual language of the series.
To be published in 2026.
Every work is a fragment.
Together, they form a world that does not reveal itself as a whole.
You walk through them, not over them.