Seen: オレンジという青 / An Orange Kind of Blue
Who: 須藤広幸 / Hiroyuki Sudo website
Where: Totem Pole Photo Gallery, Shinjuku
When: July 10 - 22, 2018 / 12:00 - 7:00pm (closed Mondays)
Sudo’s exhibition at Totem Pole syncs in well with his previous one in 2016- the clarity of his sense of color coupled with the evenness with which he approaches everything- from bowls of strawberries to nude women to a nephew lying in state- creates an eerily transparent sensation of real vision. What I mean is, his pictures don’t feel calculated or composed, but felt. The longer you spend with a photo, the more it slowly makes itself known.
Perhaps this apparent lack of artifice is actually an artifice of its own. Still, despite subject matter that’s superficially related to stuff you’ll see on Instagram, Sudo’s cool handling of his output and correlations between the prints on the walls makes for something much more interesting and meaningful than you’ll see through a smartphone screen.
Fact: You’re probably looking at this through a smartphone screen. See the show in person, or get his photobook instead.