We all wait for Hanami through the whole year. It is awaited with joy and trepidation. We expect the first bud to bloom in the fresh and crystal clear air in the beginning of spring time. And then it comes, blooming every day. The birth of its beauty, but at the same time its withering. Hanami, your petals are already beginning their fall, while you're showing life your beauty.
I’ve started a series of portraits inspired by Ukiyo-e. Asai Ryōi celebrated this mood in his novel "Tales of that Floating World", written c. 1661: “ […] living only for the moment, savouring the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms, and the maple leaves, singing songs, drinking sake, and diverting oneself just in floating, unconcerned by the prospect of imminent poverty, buoyant and carefree, like a gourd carried along with the river current: this is what we call ukiyo. […]” In my interpretation of Ukiyo-e, characters are like ghosts, mysterious apparitions, demons, yokai. They show themselves, reveal their own nature, story and then disappear. They are living in shadows, in a past time, in the idea of their own name, abstraction that becomes real, with a human body but always, elusive, ethereal, impermanent. The shots are based on the japanese name, written by kanji. Kanji tells us how is that character, his mood and behavior. My Ukiyo tells also about hedonism, pleasure of beauty, researching of the wonder, but it is also a memory, a sadness veil for a world that can not be in reality, maybe only in imagination, way of escape, just for a few moments, and then the shadows come back.