Mass

Hiroshi Takizawa
Mass

Photographs: Hiroshi Takizawa

Publisher: Newfave

76 pages

Year: 2015

Comments: Grey hardcover. 350 x 230 mm. UV color print. First edition, 2015. Shortlisted for 'First Book Prize' of Aperture / Paris Photo. PhotoBook Awards 2015. Limited edition of 300 copies. In very good condition.

Hiroshi Takizawa's 'Mass' is composed of recent photographs that concentrate on new interpretations of materials such as concrete and stone: the materials used to raise buildings.

In his photographs Takizawa uses them to create new motifs. According to his own fetishism he warps, cuts and overlaps the images he recorded, transformed through the process of reproduction. He transforms the mass of the materials that are his subject by planarizing them, setting in motion the knowledge and memories of the viewer to help make sense visually of what is on the page in front of them.

The stone that makes up the robust buildings that are the subject of his works has a natural origin. It is a natural resource that was artificially cut into artifacts and replicated, gaining a new quality as a building material. Takizawa feels a similarity between the process that changes the form of resources and how photos or life itself go through transformations. His approach to his work is centered on the different aspects of this process of change.

'Mass' focuses on both this process of transformation of these raw materials as well as the process of making a tangible book. The photos featured in the book are of many sizes placed on two differently textured types of paper. The pages are separately cut and the size of each page differs from the next, a special kind of bookbinding being applied. As a result, every page of 'Mass' literally has a different mass, visually replicating opening up a new space every time a page is turned.