The ultimate beauty that he pursued even by eliminating the lens and focus. What does Kusuhei Akagi present in his photo exhibition "Kenko / Kenko"?

As the saying goes, "three cold days and four warm days" , the temperatures have been fluctuating wildly these days. It is a wonder that the city looks even more beautiful at night when the air is clear and the lights of the glittering neon lights are even more beautiful.

Introduced here is "Kenko / Kenko," a photographic work that captures the city at night. The artist is Kusuhei Akagi, who is active in the world of photography.

I would like to start with Mr. Akagi's explanation.

Born in 1977, Akagi graduated from the Department of Photography at Nihon University College of Art before moving to the U.K. After returning to Japan in 2008, he began his career as a photographer in earnest, becoming the first foreign member of the Poland-based photography collective Czulosc (Sensitivity) in 2001. He continues to pursue the medium of photography in a way that is not bound by existing ideas.

. Mr. Fumihiro Hayashi, who was the editor-in-chief of the cult-favorite magazine "DUNE," also highly evaluated this gem of talent.

His masterpiece "Kenko" looks more like minimal art than a photograph, but in fact, he takes the lens, the lifeblood of a photograph, out of the camera to release the shutter.

Mr. Akagi explains as follows

Kenkoh is a healthy light, a layer that includes all things beautiful and ugly, and is wild and unadulterated, exposing everything. I wanted to capture the luminescence of the city at night as it is, as much as possible, without the artificiality of lenses or focus, and without the artificiality of the human will to photograph. I want ART to permeate our daily lives as "beauty for use," and I want this uniquely created photographic "kenko" to become an oasis for city dwellers and a new folk art for the future of Tokyo.

. you can see from this text that he thinks more like an artist than a photographer.

If you are interested in seeing his work in person, please visit the photo exhibition at the gallery "Studio 4N east & west" in Shibuya, Tokyo, starting on Wednesday, February 22.

The exhibition will feature selected unpublished works from the "Kenko / Kenko" series of 40,000 pieces, as well as new works. On the opening day, the 22nd, a reception party will be held at the same location from 19:00 to 21:00.

The ultimate world of beauty that Mr. Akagi is pursuing , may be "Kenko / Kenko". . If you visit, you will experience something different from other photo exhibitions.