Nature is a temple in which the living pillars sometimes let slip jumbled worlds-

Our daily world is a forest of pillars which support a temple in which everything reverberates, various colors, scents, and sounds mix and gain new life.

Sugawara has been working with the oldest print method Wet Collodion to produce photographs which are then printed on the most modern of Ink Jet Printer, thus producing collaboration between analogue and digital techniques--- It is called An original print of the 21st century. The high quality of his work has received a great deal of praise.

This is the first time to introduce this collaboration in Asia.

"The Bright Forest" is the award-winning Ichigo Sugawara's first exhibition in Asia, outside of Japan, and showcases his classic black and white photographs taken in the 1980s of pillars in San Marco Plaza in Venice, Italy. Through Sugawara's interpretation, the pillars are given a sense of individual identity. The pillars are all battered by natural elements and age, and Sugawara skillfully likens the structures with human beings.

Ichigo Sugawaras bio

Ichigo Sugawara was born in Yokohama, Japan in 1960. He graduated from Osaka University of Arts in 1985 with a BFA majoring in photography. Since then, his signature black and white stills have captured the imagination of the world. In 1996, he was the director of photography in the movie Blue Fish, an officially invited film of the Berlin International Film Festival. More recently in 2004, his work became the permanent collection of the National Library of France. In 2005, he held a group exhibition with Robert Frank and Harry Callahan at the MacGill Gallery in New York; and in 2006, he was the director of the opening of the animation Mushishi that won the best award in the Tokyo International Fair. For a sampling of his work, please visit his website at

http://www.strawberrys.co.jp/2005/news/news20060415.html