In this series, Underlying, I chose seemingly ordinary objects in nature as my photographic subjects. I then created two identical negatives, flipped one of them, and layered them together to achieve a symmetrical image. Due to the mysteriousness of darkroom photography, I’ve been unable to predict how the symmetrical image will appear until I process the film. As I moved through this series, some images presented as mandalas, a geometric configuration of symbols in Buddhism. Others took the form of dogus, Japanese traditional figurines of the ancient era. And perhaps the most memorizing of all, some of the photographs make the viewer feel as if they are peering through a kaleidoscope.

Symmetry in art is not a revolutionary artistic method. People have realized from ancient times that symmetry gave aesthetic pleasure and brought a sense of universal harmony. This relationship of symmetry has been applied in modalities such as drawing, sculpting, and architecture.

The subjects that I collect in nature aren’t necessarily special and mostly anyone could step outside and find similar objects. However, when they are captured with my lens and then their images are processed, they suddenly appear symmetrical and abstract. Perhaps, even special. I relish in the way they resemble ancient art like the mandalas and the dogus, seemingly transcending our modern perception of design in art and taking us back to how design originated.

Mandalas represent a large world with geometrical order and patterns of small elements. Shinto (the native religion in my home country of Japan) believes the existence of spirits in nature, known as animism. This series has led me to ponder what my role is, could I have unintentionally begun to share these fundamental concepts with the artists of ancient times who we have evolved from? What is underlying?

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