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Takeshi Shikama

Takeshi Shikama.jpeg

In 2002, Takeshi Shikama turned to photography after a career in the field of design. He was drawn to forests as the subject for his large format camera. In 2007, his first photo collection was publishedas Mori no Hida - Silent Respirations of Forest. This project became the start of what will be a lifetime endeavor. Roaming the forests, he trained his lens to capture the scenes of fleeting moments of all living things. He began a new body of work in five parts. Utsuroi - Evanescence: Forest, Field, Lotus, Garden and Landscape. 

 

He began to make Platinum/Palladium Prints. Since 2008 and two years later he started to use Japanese hand crafted Gampi paper for all of his prints. As thoughts of the forest grew, he ventured out from Japan, expanding his vision to capture new locations and landscapes, working in America and in Europe.

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His gaze projected on manmade nature in metropolis created a new series : Urban Forests. In 2013, he received the first Jon Schueler Scholarship Award, Artist in residence at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the National Centre for Gaelic Language, Culture and the Arts in Isle of Skye, Scotland. While preserving a continuity with his first opus, Mori no Hida - Silent Respiration of Forests and echoing Utsuroi – Evanescence series , Takeshi Shikama’s new photographs constitute an alternate body of work, Kansyo – Contemplation.

 

His travels inspired more series,Bi no Tani - Valley of Beauty which were photographed in Spain and Italy. And Il Giardino Segreto (Seacret Garden) was born from his visit to Berlin in Germany and Bomarzo in Italy. Conceived like a contemporary Noah’s Ark, he has been photographing the images of stuffed animals in dioramas in the natural history museums and the taxidermy shop, also greenhouse plant specimens and dried seeds since 2008. He named this project as Garden of Memory - Animals, Plants, Seeds and Stone. In 2016 and 2017, created the prints wishing to hand those portraits over to the future generations.

In 2019, he was inspired to create a new project when he found an antique finger bowl at the flea market in Paris. Through the magic of a 100-year-old spherical glass, he explores a surrealist approach to image making. Reminiscences are the scenes which remain imprinted in his mind. Shikama’s work has been shown internationally throughout Great Britian and Europe, in the United States, Hong Kong, Taiwan and consistently in Japan. His work is in public and private collections around the world.

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Permanent Collection

  • Bibliotheque Nationale de France (Paris, France)

  • Hermes International (Paris, France)

  • Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego (California, U.S.A)

  • Museet for Fotokunst Brandts (Odense, Denmark)

  • The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Texas, U.S.A)

  • Santa Barbara Museum of Fine Art (California, U.S.A)

  • Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University (Conneticut, U.S.A)

  • Portland Art Museum (Oregon, U.S.A)

  • Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Yamanashi Japan)

  • San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts(California, U.S.A)

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