Takashi Amano's Photo Exhibition in Qatar
2009/04/13
Takashi Amano’s photo exhibition was held at Qatar Photographic Society in Doha, Qatar for 10 days from Feb. 19th to 28th, 2009. The theme of this event was to unveil "The natural environment of Japan (Sado, Niigata). " The beautiful landscape of Sado through four seasons was captured with large-format film and enlarged to large panels. These panels as large as 4 meter were displayed to the audiences in Qatar, where people live in the totally different climate.
The philosophy behind:
"Beautiful, natural landscape is connected to spirits of human beings. "
The beginning of this exhibition was triggered by G8 Toyako summit in July, 2008 in Hokkaido, Japan which addressed environmental issue as a major topic. There, Takashi Amano’s work of primitive cedar tree in Sado was displayed to the world leaders and drew public attention. Then, this exhibition was organized mainly by Mr. Tariq Almana of Aqua Art, and the Qatar distributor of Aqua Design Amano (hosted by: Qatar Photographic Society, supported by: Japanese embassy in Qatar, special sponsored by: Aramex International).
Each work exhibited there was selected carefully by Takashi Amano himself in order to show the landscape does not exist in Qatar. "I hope that the audience in Qatar will feel the importance of environmental preservation when they stand in front of the photographs of the snow storm, rain, mossy forest, and wild plants in the mountains etc…,” said Amano in the interview with local press.
People visited the exhibition showed their interests in the landscape of Japan which is different from what they are used to see in Qatar. There were also many photographers stared into the large panels capturing the minute detail of nature with the large-format films as it shows the extra-ordinal level of clearness (same as looking the world with 6.0 eyesight). The scenic natural landscape perhaps gave the important message to the audience in Qatar where rapid economical development has been continued in progress.
(Left) At Photo Exhibition (Right) Memorial plate made of crystal was presented to Amano by Qatar Photographic Society
Appealing the importance of nature through the local media:
Many local presses published reports of the photography exhibition and introduced the rich nature of Sado, Amano’s passion and commitment towards ecological landscape photographs, and his comment about environmental issues. This event contributed to connect two countries and increase the cultural exchanges between them.
At press conference:
Amano made a comment as below to the question "how environmental preservation should be appealed to the public” at the press conference with local newspapers.
"I hope the audience would feel something from my photography which I try to capture every single detail of grass and tree. Japanese word for photography, sya-shi-n literary stands for capturing the reality. My works shows the real image of nature without modifying the detail like in digital photographs. In the world, many of the precious natures have lost or distinct already, and we can never see them again. Here, I aim to appeal the importance of nature through environmental photographs by showing the environmental changes from forepassed to current. "
(Picture) Press conference for the local press held at Japanese ambassador’s residence. Amano explaining with the large-format film.
Qatar newspaper articles:
