Seen: 木綿の影 / Cotton Shadow
Who: Tomona Hayashi
Where: 3rd District Gallery, Shinjuku
When: February 23 - March 8, 2015
The evolution of Hayashi’s work is apparent with even a cursory glance at the sample images from her previous shows at 3rd District since joining the gallery in 2013- Her latest show, Cotton Shadow, carries on with her continual focus on smaller transitory moments. The faces of others are save for one shot of a child on her father’s shoulders, mostly unseen if not avoided intentionally. The normality and familiarity of the subjects themselves are subverted through her lens and film. There is little that’s clear in the sense of it being a separate entity from anything else- the continuation of mood through the show is certainly partly due to her Hexar’s lens and Tmax film- but more importantly through the tone of the phenomena she focuses on.
Hayashi has been experimenting with exhibition methods- she started out with traditional 11x14 prints in mats- but has branched out into a variety of print sizes in recent shows. This exhibition consists of seventeen large 800×600mm fiber prints that she made in her darkroom/apartment. Under the safelight, each sheet was first taped to the wall in preparation for exposure- something possible with her enlarger head tilted 90 degrees and pointed towards the wall. For development she filled large plastic storage bins with chemistry and hand rolled each print through the process- something that resulted in about three or four prints a day, she told me. Each print has a slight (and inevitable) curl from being pinned to the wall- it’s a slight physicality of silver-print photography that suits her work well.