Sakiko Nomura photographs the magic of darkness

Madrid. Japanese photographer Sakiko Nomura argues that she reflects reality as it is. In his images, darkness has thousands of nuances; The looks, dozens of evocations, and the shadows, always present, either those of the flowers, the bare bodies or the rooms of the solitary and rickety hotel, thousands of possible readings.

The Mapfre Foundation in Madrid opened the exhibition Tender is the night, The first great retrospective in Europe of one of the most enigmatic photographers of current Japanese culture.

Nomura, born in Yamaguchi in 1967, adopted a heterodox trajectory from a young age; After his first experiments with the Chamber, he decided to become the assistant of one of the great figures of Japanese photography, Noboyoshi Araki, well known for his reports in which he shows the deafness and violence of the hotel rooms of the prostitutes of the prostitutes of Tokyo With him he worked 20 years, in which in addition to forming he discovered his gaze, his way of portraying that reality.

In a brief encounter with media in Madrid, Nomura tried to decipher the keys to his photograph, of those nuances of darkness, of those solitary characters that almost always appear with a melancholic look, of those urban landscapes that disturb for their spectral silence.

I simply portrait reality as it is. Those who appear are people with whom I have maintained communication, contact; There is a story behind. I do not take photographs of male nudes for a preconceived idea of ​​rupture or innovationexplained Nomura, whom they have involuntarily called in many publications the Male nudes photographerdefinition that he does not like or seems adjusted to his work.

The photographs are dark, with grain, even blurred; They show a world of ambiguous and mysterious shadows, which, however, are also celebratory.

A significant trip to Granada

The exhibition of Madrid presents the works of Sakiko Nomura for themes, which can be specific, such as flowers, naked, animals or portraits of a well -known Kabuki actor, but also for being part of his photolibros, as Night Flight (night flight), or by gathering the same technical characteristics, such as the series Another Black Darkness (another black darkness). Finally, some of the images made in Granada are shown in the summer of 2024, on the occasion of a trip he made and that, he explained, It has been very important to me, because I learned to know better, through a series of stories, my father’s life, which already has senile dementia.

The curator of the exhibition, the historian Enrique Juncosa, explained that, Attracted by darkness as a back of the light, in the photographs of nomura the night and the shadows, the dim light, the unfocused usually star the scenes, as if he intended to find a way out or the light at the end of the trip. The elements or people who portray seem to arise from that magic that the darkness offers, and that sometimes the artist only discovers in the development.

The title of retrospective, Tender is the ndesert is inspired by the title of Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s novel Tender is the Night, published in 1934. As in the novel, the protagonists of the scenes that make up Nomura’s photographs are young and attractive. In addition, they show the power and tension of erotic desire, but with great tenderness. His nudes, for which he is better known, almost always made in black and white, in night atmospheres, mysterious and full of shadows, with visible or unfocused grain, they alternate with images of animals or lifes, especially flowers, views of cities , hotel rooms, atmospheric phenomena, lights and motion reflexesexplained the curator.

The exhibition can be seen in Madrid from today until May 11.