IBASHO is pleased to present ‘Floating Around’, the second solo exhibition by Hitoshi Fugo.
Born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1947 and raised in Yonezawa, Yamagata from the age of three, Fugo graduated from the Department of Photography at Nihon University College of Art in 1970. Thereafter he was an apprentice of the great Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe, and became independent in 1973.
‘Floating Around’ is a series of monochrome photographs taken between 1971 and 1997 in Paris, New York, Japan, and elsewhere. First presented in 1976 at Gallery Shunju (Ginza), the series was subsequently exhibited several times, including at Nikon Salon (1979) and in Austria (1982). During the 1970s, while closely observing the work of Eikoh Hosoe and his senior contemporary Daido Moriyama, Fugo became deeply convinced that “photography is not merely a copy of reality,” and that “the role of photography is not limited to imprisoning subjects within the present time.” After much experimentation, ‘Floating Around’ became the first series through which he arrived at the conviction that photography could also achieve a literary mode of expression, free from the constraints of presentness and documentation. The creation of this series was inspired when a casual photograph of carp swimming in a fish tank unexpectedly connected with memories of the asthma attacks he suffered as a child. The sensation of receiving bronchial injections, feeling air return to his lungs, and gradually recovering from a negative physical state became linked to images drifting through his mind while being released from an overwhelming gravitational force. Through photography, Fugo sought to visualise those fleeting mental images as they surfaced and disappeared. This exhibition reveals the point of origin at which Fugo established the distinctive style that would later characterise his practice: constructing worlds through sequences of photographs and the movement of afterimages, often resembling literature, music, or architecture.

Artists: Hitoshi Fugo