by Joanna Fu, 2019
This text was originally published in the Chinese Photography Magazine, 2019
Photography has long been involved in the creation of various types of contemporary art by means of creative materials, documentary tools, auxiliary media and other functions. Satoshi Fujiwara is trying to launch what he calls a "photographic counterattack" with his work. In this counterattack, he turns photography from a supporting role to a leading one, and profoundly explores the connotation and extension of photography as a medium in the development of contemporary art.
However, making a counterattack was not Satoshi Fujiwara's original purpose. He does not counterattack for the sake of counterattacking. He intends to expand the essence and richness of photography in contemporary artistic creation by challenging the medium itself and its exhibition forms over and over again. From the overall presentation of his creation, Satoshi Fujiwara's works have an extremely vigorous fusion of Dadaism and German Expressionism. His straight photography works tend to highlight the local details of his subjects by approximating the sense of distance between him and the subject, which also makes his works present a texture of low saturation and coarse grains. At the same time, he has abandoned what is considered “good” composition in photography and deliberately presented an unexpected “bad photo” perspective, which instead adds an unforgettable coarseness to the images. Apart from the work itself, Satoshi Fujiwara's more iconic breakthrough in photography lies in the way he presents his work. He put aside the usual framed mounting of photographs and adopted a brutal combination and stacking of a large number of prints of varying sizes to create a more radical installation, changing the connotation of photography as a medium and the context in which it is viewed.
Satoshi Fujiwara's exhibition space often presents a strong post-industrial style. PVC sheets, metal rods, and packing glue, etc., which are generally used in construction sites, are the materials he often uses for his exhibitions. He even prints his works in tarpaulin so that he could fold, twist, tear, knead and hang them at will. For example, he used to pile up a bunch of printed works like a small mountain at random in the exhibition, and this kind of impacting exhibition form forces the audience to rethink about photography in the field of contemporary art. Satoshi Fujiwara's approach to exhibition is hardly a precedent to be found in the photography field. On the contrary, we can see some shades of present and contemporary art in his works: whether it is Dadaism, the conceptual creation of ready-made objects initiated by Duchamp, or installation, sculpture, etc. In the way the prints are hung in a bundle, we can see hints of Sam Gilliam, a black artist who was active in the 1960s and is still on display in leading museums today. We know that Sam Gilliam's signature hanging paintings expanded the formal rules of abstract expressionism, which was most active in the 1960s, to a whole new path. Satoshi Fujiwara seems to have inherited the innovative spirit of Sam Gilliam. Having lived and worked in Berlin for nearly a decade, he seems to have absorbed the pioneering spirit of Joseph Beuys, the legendary German contemporary artist of the 20th century who proposed the concept of "social sculpture". As a viewer, we can feel that Satoshi Fujiwara has pushed the photographic presentation and formal expression to an unconventional level.
Satoshi Fujiwara's subversion and challenge to photography is a response to the current changes in photography and the way photographs are produced and viewed. Satoshi Fujiwara attempts to present the complex change in photography and the resulting change in the relationship between images and their audiences, in the midst of a rapidly iterating torrent of digital technology that is changing the way humans process and manipulate images. In terms of the content of Satoshi Fujiwara's photography, we often see images about power, social-riots, democracy and resistance, refugees, the underclass, and other issues related to politics and society that are happening in Europe. However, Satoshi Fujiwara's works are not documentary photography, but rather artificial constructions. For example, some of the images showing citizens gathering or police cracking down on people were put together by Satoshi Fujiwara after having someone pose for them at different times. The scenes of injuries to human body parts were also digitally post-produced. Satoshi Fujiwara deliberately changes the context of his work on social issues by using this kind of image manipulation, which is known and taken for granted by the public today, to highlight the “reality" that photography is increasingly being manipulated.
Satoshi Fujiwara's contemporary response to the changes in the medium itself has brought him to international attention. Like Hiroshi Sugimoto, who began his creative career in New York in the 1970s, they both moved away from their native Japanese environment and jumped into the vortex of Western-oriented art world. However, they each established their own unique creative paths and styles as a result. Regardless of their own perceptions, their Japanese identity, more or less because it represents the environment and culture that shaped their education and upbringing, is one of the things that has made them visible in the Western art world. In any case, as a new generation of Japanese image creators, we see in Satoshi Fujiwara's work that he is launching a brilliant counterattack on contemporary art with an open attitude about photography in the context of the digital age.
Venus, 2018, Biennale de l'Image Possible, La Boverie, Liège, Belgium