Five photographs from the bamboo forests along the Shikoku Pilgrimage route in Japan.
Bamboo grows quickly. It bends without breaking. It rustles when the wind blows through it. And it stands still in a way that almost nothing else can.
These five photographs were taken on the Japanese Shikoku pilgrimage trail, amidst bamboo forests that almost dampen all sound and slow every breath. Not a place you simply pass through. Rather, one that holds you.
The pictures do not show what bamboo is. They show what it evokes: the feeling of stepping out of the rhythm of everyday life for a moment, and into something older.
Heavier. Quieter.
All five works are colour photographs, created using the ICM technique directly in-camera. The order of the images does not follow a narrative chronology. It follows the leading lines: twice vertical, once horizontal, as the shapes flow into one another.
Die Linien atmen.
That is the first impression that sticks. Not bamboo as a plant, not the forest as a place, but movement as something you find yourself doing without even meaning to.
The photograph was taken in a moment of complete presence, when body, wind and light were briefly in sync.
Whoever stops here is already in the thick of it.
Overlapping lines that refuse to align. The image carries a sense of unease, but an unease that does not press upon the viewer.
More of one that asks: When did you last stop measuring time?
In the bamboo forest, this eludes us. No two moments are alike; none can be held onto.
The picture isn't either.
Bamboo rustles when the wind blows through it. Not loudly. Rhythmically.
Like something that has always been there, just waiting to be heard.
This photograph does not merely convey that sound; it becomes the sound itself: vertical lines that repeat, vary and soothe. An inner metronome attuned to nothing but the moment.
Light refracts differently in the bamboo forest. It doesn’t shine through openly, but in streaks, through gaps that are always in different places.
The composition shows this play of light and shadow as you experience it:
not as an image, but as a state.
For a moment, you know where you are. Then the light shifts again.
The final image is the faintest. Soft streaks that are barely distinguishable from the air through which they move.
It came about in a particularly quiet stretch of the pilgrimage route, where the rustling of the leaves was the only answer to a question that had not even been asked.
Sometimes that's all it takes.
All five photographs are available as limited original prints.
Each work exists in an edition of 1/1 plus a maximum of 2 Artist Editions. Minimum size 80 cm long edge, printed on museum-quality materials by WhiteWall.
Prices from €1690; bespoke advice and custom-made items available on request.
All the images in this series were created using Intentional Camera Movement (ICM):
The camera is deliberately moved during the exposure, so that light and form overlap in the photograph.
ND filters were used as an analogue solution, allowing for longer exposure times in daylight without the need for digital manipulation.
There is no post-processing of the movement. What you see was created at the moment of capture.
Bamboo doesn't need a lot of light to grow. It finds it anyway.
You don't forget bamboo forests.
These pictures either.