The HIRAKU Project is a series of exhibitions focusing on artists who have received a grant from the Pola Art Foundation in the past. In this exhibition, the 16th installment of the series, we present the work of Nozomi Suzuki, an artist who creates installations, made up of objects and images, in which she uses photographic principles to visualize traces of light and memories concealed in familiar everyday items and old houses.

After majoring in painting in university, Suzuki taught herself photographic techniques, and in 2012, she began making works that employ wood-framed windows from the 90-year-old house that serves as her studio. Shooting landscapes that might have been visible through the windows, Suzuki applied photosensitive emulsion to the glass and printed the picture directly onto the window. This imbued the well-used window with a vague image of a scene that a former resident of the house or the window itself might have seen. Suzuki sets out to bring out the memories of things that dwell within these ordinary items and affix them directly to the object.

During a stay in England in 2019, Suzuki obtained a variety of relics and visual devices, such as portholes, telescopes, and magnifying glasses, and investigated their history. These images reflect scientific and technological developments that opened the way for new types of visual experience and modernization, and sensations and preferences that were common to the age and society, elevating the pieces into works that connote public memory.

Mirrors and windows, both contained in the exhibition title, were indispensable elements in the development of painting and photography, and telescopes, also used in the title, are visual devices that fulfilled the human desire to “see.” Suzuki’s works, which deal earnestly and directly with memories and traces inherent in these items, provide us with an opportunity to consider the primordial form of photographic expression, and the passage of time and disappearance of scenery that lies within our personal stories as well as the larger flow of history.