Spotlight: Naohiro Maeda
September 20th, 2024
Naohiro Maeda, a mixed media lens-based artist from Japan, is exploring something more than just aesthetics. Taking apart and rebuilding landscapes with digital processes and hand embroidery, Naohiro delves deep into memory and identity in our modern age. Pushing the line between reflection, recollection and represenation in photography, through Naohiro’s work tradition and the contemporary meet.
The latest interview in our Spotlight series, in which we introduce you to international photographers with exciting new points of view, here we ask Naohiro five questions to understand the process and inspiration behind their practice:
1) How would you introduce your work to someone who hasn’t seen it before?
I am a visual artist and originally from Japan. My work is an exercise of embroidering photo prints.
2) Can you tell us about how your practice started? When did you first start taking photographs? How has your relationship to photography evolved over time?
I started using a DSLR camera about 10 years ago while photographing food whilst I studied food styling and food photography online.
Then I went to a photography school in Boston and learned fine art photography from 2016 to 2018. Since then I mainly focus on making reconstructed landscape photographs.
3) Your work uses computer manipulation tools to alter the RAW images you photograph to generate abstracted final images. Can you tell us about this process and how you feel about the relationship between your work and the software it utalises?
I think of my work in relation to commercial photographer’s image-making processes, which involve software alterations to create perfection, whilst I use the same tools for the opposite purpose.
They surprise me almost every time. The software are made by the software developers so it feel almost like having collaborators in making the final images.
4) You’ve spoken previously about the impact of being an immigrant in your work, and how there is a difference between cityscapes and landscapes - how does a sense of place inform/lead your image making?
A sense of place keeps shifting because of the quality of light and air, but also because of my relationship to it.
I noticed that we may share the same landscapes but locals have a more shared sense of place, whilst I have a brand new response to and understanding of it. It is the gap there that I explore.
5) You do Sashiko over your prints - how did you start merging the technological (and reproducible) nature of photography with physical and unique embroidery?
I encountered crochet and knitting in 2021 and I had been wanting to merge my needlework process into my photographic process. After I learned about the concept of Sashiko, repairing and reinforcing the garment, it seemed very organic to me to fix my distorted photo prints with thread.
The images were reconstructed by the software, so knots are placed where they thought the repairs were most needed. In some ways, this shows the connection in the logic of my mind and the software’s process to create the final outcomes.
I hope this collaborative relationship leads the viewer to question the line between fantasies and realities.
All Images from You Must Believe in Spring, 2024 -, images courtesy of the artist
About Naohiro Maeda
Naohiro Maeda (b.1978) is a visual artist from Japan. He studied fine art photography with honors at New England School of Photography and cognitive psychology at Keio University. With his practice, he explores memory, identity and space.
He was selected for the Feature Shoot Emerging Photography Awards 2024, Klompching Gallery’s Fresh 2023 finalist and Japan Photo Award Vol.9. His works have been exhibited internationally including the Griffin Museum of Photography and The Curated Fridge, and has been featured in Lenscratch and The Boston Globe.
He is currently living in Colorado Springs.