The Japanese artist, based in Tokyo and New York, transports us into art and experimental photography through her reflective and mental wanderings in black and white, on the edge of filmic narrative.
Chitose Kuroishi's series are captivating and introspective visual narratives that explore questions of identity, particularly her own. Confronting herself, others, objects, her partner, and also her senses and sensations, she interrogates the very nature of the photographic medium. From the multiple to the particular, her work is thus deeply personal. Through her monochrome portfolio, this young virtuoso of fine arts, who studied photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York, tells her story, reflects on herself, and questions herself. Her first-person work probes her vision of the world, poised between subjectivity and objectivity, which she experiences organically. Chitose Kuroishi joins the ranks of intriguing rising artists who are racking up awards and quickly capturing the attention of art magazines, galleries, and institutions. Some of her images are part of the public collections of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Art (KMoPA) in Japan.
© Chitose Kuroishi
Life between past and present
His series thus examine the narrative potential of photography in light of filmic images, exploring the space between the visible and the invisible, reality and the extraordinary. For example, My Phantom. In this project, Chitose Kuroishi recounts the summer she spent with another version of herself, namely her ghost, "just the two of them, together, in the world." She thus leads us between shadow and light in this true story, taking the form of a succession of evolving images, as she walks through her hometown for the first time in a long time: « It was early summer, a damp, calm, and windless afternoon. My body was sweating, and the sun was at its zenith. […] Suddenly, the road ended in a dead end in front of a quaint house. […] The sunlight was slowly falling and casting shadows of my shape on the front door. […] Looking back on it years later, I wonder if the experience that summer didn't happen in another dimension, a place where my life exists before I live it, and where it continues afterward. […] She was alone, and so was I. […] That time is now gone forever, and sometimes it seems never to have existed.
© Chitose Kuroishi
© Chitose Kuroishi
Dissolution of the border
The series Untogether is of the same ilk. Except that here, the ghost becomes a concrete being, her partner. Chitose Kuroishi explores her physical interaction with him, while visualizing a mental relationship she has maintained. In the relational context, "together" implies a feeling of unity, whereas "untogether" suggests disunion. “No matter how many years I spend with my partner, there’s always a certain boundary between us. […] I sometimes experience a moment when that boundary dissolves, and yet, I can’t be a part of him. Our bodies remain two separate beings. The moment of unity never lasts long. The feeling unity is merely an illusion. […] I sometimes experience the feeling that our souls become one. However, it is impossible for us to exist as a single entity. […] As this project progressed, I realized that Untogether became “together” as a work. The photographer here uses film with an ISO sensitivity of 3200 to have more grain and less detail, in order to better dissolve this boundary between their two bodily entities.
Nathalie Dassa
United States – New York