from the Gallery;

Naoki Kimura is a fine art photographer who lives in New York City. After going to the US in 1987, he completed a Master’s in art history with an emphasis on Renaissance art. One of his research topics was iconology and its transformation in historical consciousness, and the method he used to analyze this phenomenon led him to develop a novel world view that synthesized both the classical and the modern.

 

Upon moving to New York City in 1990, he had the opportunity to produce new work under exclusive contracts with galleries in that city. Later on, he went to Europe, where he produced several pieces of fine art photography.

 

Kimura’s guiding concept is nagi. A word with zen-like undertones, nagi expresses Kimura’s quest to capture in the frame those fleeting instances of tranquility created by the interplay of time and space in a particular place. Kimura's work over the last few years has moved in a more minimal direction to acquire a solemnity and depth that has found a devoted audience among American and European collectors.

 

A fundamental element of Kimura’s work is a gaze trained on the beauty emanating from the interior of temples and other old architecture. Of course, capturing the beauty inherent in a pure and unadorned space such as a temple is nothing new, but Kimura’s images are exceptional for how they step into places steeped in history to capture fleeting scenes the light reveals within. In Kimura’s photography, light descends like a vale, envelops the surroundings, pierces the darkness.

 

All phenomena around the subject – temperature, moisture, natural and manmade light – form a fleeting instant of beauty. This ephemeral beauty is Kimura’s nagi, a Japanese word expressing the calm of, say, a lake as still as glass on a windless spring morning. 

Kimura’s object is to capture nagi within the boundaries of a carefully composed frame. 
The shutter opens in that brief instant when the golden ratio’s harmonious proportions converge to form an ephemeral beauty. In its quest for unadulterated beauty, Kimura’s work is the essence of photographic expression. With no empty technical flourishes to fall back on, he crosses the boundary all alone, and once there his sure eye shears away all superfluous elements with the clean precision of a Japanese sword until only the senses remain.

“Beauty,” says Kimura, “is one of the emotions, a human instinct.”

 

 

Seiji Komatsu, Director

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