- Sku: 4865412166
- Type: Photography Books
PREORDER The Netherlands × Chiba: Taking Photographs, Telling Stories
Please note: This is a preorder item that will be ordered when an order is received. It may take additional time to ship beyond the delivery estimate shown below.
This book is structured as a dual project between two photographic practices: the Dutch duo Sara van Rij & David van der Leeuw (left-opening section) and Japanese photographer-writer Yuki Shimizu (right-opening section). It explores the themes of “reflected views” and “inherited views” through contrasting yet interconnected visual narratives.
Based in Amsterdam and Paris, Sara van Rij & David van der Leeuw are emerging artists known for their distinctive photographic style that uses reflections, shadows, and abstract framing. Moving through cities like flâneurs, they capture elusive urban elements—indistinct silhouettes, vibrant colors, abstract forms, and poetic rhythms—treating them as essential components of the city itself, evoking its underlying essence.
Their approach to light and shadow, almost painterly in nature, is also evident in their “Still Life” series created during lockdown, where everyday scenes are transformed through reflections and projected shadows into unexpected, surreal images. These works connect to traditions of surrealism and self-portraiture.
Their imagery often carries cinematic qualities, shaped in part by growing up in the early digital era. Influenced by filmmaker John Cassavetes, their series “Metropolitan Melancholia,” shot in post-COVID New York, captures fragments of urban memory and the sense of a city in recovery, evoking layered storytelling through visual fragments.
In contrast, Yuki Shimizu—an artist and novelist from Chiba—moves fluidly between photography and literature. Her practice involves deep historical research into specific places, weaving together fact and fiction to create narratives that transcend time.
In this work, she draws inspiration from historical photographs of Tokugawa Akitake at the Kōtō-tei residence in Matsudo, a nationally designated cultural property built over 140 years ago. Guided by archival materials, diaries, and photographic records, as well as the imagined perspective of a museum curator (“Curator K”), she traces landscapes such as the Kōtō-tei estate and the coastal scenery of Inage.
Her work reinterprets landscapes as “inherited views,” incorporating historical photographs, diaries, and artworks from institutions such as the Matsudo City Museum and the Chiba Prefectural Museum of Art. Through this process, she constructs a narrative that traverses time, blending reality and fiction to reanimate layered memories of place.
Bringing together Sara van Rij & David van der Leeuw and Yuki Shimizu, the book presents parallel narratives that emerge through the act of photographing. These perspectives reflect and resonate within the deeper layers of landscape, memory, and time, inviting viewers to open new stories within themselves.
Details:
- Pages: 224
- Language: Japanese
- Publisher: Akaaka Art Publishing
- Release date: December 20, 2025
- Dimensions: 18.2 × 1.5 × 25.7 cm
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PREORDER The Netherlands × Chiba: Taking Photographs, Telling Stories
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