In "A Place to Hide Away," the artist invites viewers on an introspective journey through the complexities of authenticity, retreat, and the emotional landscapes we navigate. The series explores the dualities of warmth and coldness, presence and absence, revealing the fragile layers of self that emerge when we seek refuge.

Fraught with social, cultural and political connotations, Identity is the medium through which we express and adopt signifiers. It’s that funny thing that acts as a connective tissue, joining us as particular individuals to the general or universal. It’s the question “Where are you from?” met with pause, and more pause. There are those who answer with conviction, while there are others who answer differently each time, but all of us speak of identity with our mouths full.  What follows? Is our relationship to our identities a mix of pride, estrangement or shame? We could brandish our signs like hearts on our sleeves, or they are the comfort blanket that helps us to sleep well at night. We let others tie us up neatly up in a bow, sticky package label slapped on, hard to shirk. In strange ways, we find our- selves straying far from our roots, living in radically foreign places, just to inculcate a sense of longing; perhaps to long is part of what it means to belong, or at least more than we tend to think.

In this exhibition, the painfully intimate portraits of men by Nobuyoshi Araki’s protégé Sakiko Nomura subverts the ‘male gaze’; Zhong Lin reinterprets Satoshi Kons’ anima- tion “Perfect Blue” (1997), a nightmarish story about a youth pop idol who tries to outgrow her own image; Takashi Homma tails a model called Raiki around her everyday life in Tokyo; self-taught Hong Kong photographer Chan Wai Kwong reinvents the image culture he became acquainted with through his father, a news photographer.

Also lending visuals and voice to the idiosyncrasies of identity, Osamu Yokonami, Charlotte Stouvenot, Stefan Dotter, Stephane Sednaoui and Lena C Emery further explore its joys, aches and discontents. For Identity, above all, is what leaves us with that age-old existential puzzle: even if at the worst of times our differences appear pro- nounced, we look around the room and see plainly that we have managed to arrive here together, apart.

The artists presented in the exhibition are channels of both Eastern and Western identities, and serve to highlight the magazine’s aims to foster dialogue and forge an intercultural bridge between the two spheres. Working closely with the artists on the editorial commissions from concept to materialisation, the work here celebrates the past year of reflection and collaboration.

“The Ama is a project that arose after Stefan was introduced to the tradition by his friend Wataru Suzuki. “A few weeks later, I was on a local train from Nagoya to Toba on my way to stay with the Nakagawa family, who have been working as Ama for centuries,” Stefan recalls. “Currently there are three generations, the grandmother still goes into the sea regularly.” He notes the feeling of learning about the Ama as being similar to stumbling across a “little universe”, and because there are only around 2,000 divers left in Japan, Stefan made it his mission to document its history. “It’s a fading tradition, but with the work we do, we have the opportunity to make it live on a bit longer, even if it’s just in a book.”

“I love the raw emotion that emits from this image and the pure joy I feel looking it. The humanity seeps through in every detail and choice, compositionally and through the use of color (and lack there of). I was drawn to the expansiveness of the image as well as its simplicity.”

                                                          – Alex Prager

Awards

Life Framer 2020 by Alex Prager
Palm Photo Prize 2021 Shortlist


Press

British Journal of Photography
ItsNiceThat
This Is Paper Magazine
Huck Magazine
C 41 Magazine
Common Language Magazine