"The motif for Figures is the human body. I have been photographing still life and sceneries, and hardly dealt with this subject. The human body exposes the subject’s social background or internal situation. It was a sensitive matter and I avoided it for a long time. I finally chose this motif because I was interested in the texture of human flesh and wanted to develop a method I found while experimenting on haptic green. In this method, numerous close-up shots are stitched together: the parts are connected to present a whole. In this way, rather than the stable and centripetal whole subordinating the parts, the parts assert their presence and create the whole by relating to each other.There is a new possibility that is different from existing photographic expressions. I hope to express the tactile surface of the human body and the antagonistic relation between the part and the whole.
-Naruki Oshima, October, 2015

© Naruki Oshima, Courtesy of Yumiko Chiba Associates