Theory of “Zero-Horizon Photo Art”

Theory of Zero-Horizon Photographic Arts

*Zero-Horizon Photographic Art and Zero-Horizon Photographic Fine Art:

Their Phases and the Role of Shadō*

The concept of Zero-Horizon consists of two distinct yet related layers.

The first is Zero-Horizon Photographic Art, which designates art as a phenomenon arising prior to subjectivity—a point at which the generative structure of the world manifests before intention, meaning, or representation take form. Here, photography does not exist as a “work” in the conventional sense. Rather, it appears as a one-time trace of the world’s pre-phenomenal structure, momentarily rendered visible.

To photograph, in this context, is not to fix an object, but to stand at the threshold where structural deviation and response within the world become momentarily manifest.

The second layer is Zero-Horizon Photographic Fine Art, in which this principle is situated within social and institutional contexts—appearing as “works,” exhibitions, archives, and evaluated forms.In this phase, photographic works may involve selection, composition, and presentation. However, their essence does not originate from authorial intention or institutional framing. It remains grounded in the prior layer: the one-time generative event arising from the world’s pre-phenomenal structure. Institutionalization occurs only afterward, as a secondary placement of that trace.

The practical bridge between these two phases is Shadō.

Shadō is a discipline of practice through which the photographer minimizes subjective imposition and intentional excess, allowing the world’s generative process to surface without interference.It is not a stylistic method, nor a moral doctrine, but a mode of conduct that enables the photographer to stand at the threshold where the world’s emergence becomes perceptible.

Through the act of photographing, one does not extract an image from the world; one witnesses the moment in which the world permits its own appearance.This stance constitutes the spirit of Shadō and serves as the means by which the principles of Zero-Horizon Photographic Art are realized in lived practice.

Shadō and Zero-Horizon Photographic Fine Art thus share a common ground.Both originate from a single premise: the non-mixed contact between the world’s generative structure and the subject’s internal modulation.

Yet their orientations differ fundamentally.

• Shadō is a system of practice—a way of being and acting.

• Zero-Horizon Photographic Fine Art is a system of form—the materialized trace that results when such practice is permitted by the world.

If Shadō addresses how the photographer exists,Zero-Horizon Photographic Fine Art is what remains when that mode of existence encounters the world’s generative structure in a single, unrepeatable event.

They are therefore not equivalent and should not be joined by an equation.They are better understood as a vertical continuity:

Generation → Practice → Form

Shadō is the act of restraining the subject so as not to override the world’s emergence.Zero-Horizon Photographic Fine Art is the form that appears only when that restraint is met by the world’s permission—a momentary trace in which the world renders itself visible.

In this way, the Zero-Horizon framework is completed through a three-layer structure:

Zero-Horizon Photographic Art (generative structure)→ Shadō (practice)→ Zero-Horizon Photographic Fine Art (form)

Art is the principle.The Way is its practice.Fine Art is its visible crystallization.