“The Second Stage at GG” is a series of exhibitions presenting more recent works by former finalists in the gallery’s open competitions launched to promote budding artists in various fields. The works shown in “The Second Stage at GG” exhibitions are all created after they entered their respective fields as professional artists.

The 37th exhibition in “The Second Stage at GG” series will introduce the works of photographer ERIC. ERIC won the Grand Prix in the 2002 “Hitotsubo” competition for his photos snapped in Hong Kong. Since then he has expanded his photographic horizons robustly, as evidenced by his publications every where (Tokyo Visual Arts), in which he photographs people all around the world, and GOOD LUCK CHINA and LOOK AT THIS PEOPLE (both AKAAKA Art Publishing), two works in which he explores his roots in China.

ERIC’s latest work, Eye of the Vortex, was photographed in India over a period of approximately two years, from 2012 to 2014. Many works about India have typically included important messages with respect to views on life and death or the country’s mystique. ERIC observes India from a new perspective, as if to reconstruct it; and seeking out landscapes different from those that have come before, to photograph India he has switched cameras from his earlier 6×7 format to 35mm. So as not to get swept away in the vortex of India’s chaotic world, ERIC has shot through his own eyes as part of the crowd, and the people whose images appear in the vast number of photos taken this way aren’t people consciously posturing before a camera but rather people looking squarely and powerfully at the observer before them. In addition, Eric, seeking to inject new changes into his snapshots, this time has turned his camera lens toward not only people but other things as well. By filming urban landscapes without embellishment of any kind, their universal activities are vividly captured on film through eyes filled with curiosity.

We eagerly invite you to come to Guardian Garden to see this exhibition of ERIC’s works – vignettes of people and landscapes snapped with an unwaveringly curious eye.

Message from the Artist

In India, before anything else you become swept up in the crowds – crowds that don’t form according to norms of orderliness but as humans functioning in their natural state. Here, people accept their respective castes as a matter of fate, and it is this combination of doing what comes naturally and accepting fate that give faces to the Indian crowd. To capture an individual, it suffices to gaze upon him or her from the standpoint of an individual too. But to capture the features of a crowd, I needed to have the eyes of the crowd myself. It’s when I stood at the center of the swirling vortex around me, my eyes becoming the eyes of the crowd, that the real India appeared before me.

ERIC, Photographer