Makoto Oono
Photobook
SEPARATE HIDDEN RULES
"Bunches of living things are collected through the Internet.
Various living things are crossing over country borders for trade.
They are strange, too near to be really valued.
They are hidden so I extract them."
- Makoto Oono
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
All living organisms purchased and captured on the Internet are dropped on a daily life. Makoto Oono uses a variety of places, including animals, plants, fruits, fish, insects, everywhere as a test site, and is temporarily inserted until the end of photo shooting.
The living organisms, which is the key element to this process, moves in an unpredictable way that makes us human beings anxious.
By arranging some mysterious artifacts into the composition to add an extreme “unbalance” of the meaning of what these components are, this could no longer be identifiable as “what this picture is”.
For this reason, the seemingly completed photo holds a harmony of chaos and disruption, which then becomes further complex in multilayers when it collectively becomes Z type book.
This work is collection of traps named "SEPARATE HIDDEN RULES". The title was inspired by a surprising discovery of how the living organisms have a hidden will and a programmed gene that has a direction that moves freely.
Every subject has a name, but it could be said that that is the word that unravels the subject itself.
His approach shows the possibilities of photos in modern cities and filled with both brutality and beauty simultaneously.
SHOP
UK
ANTENNE BOOKS(LONDON)
archipelago(LONDON)
Baron(LONDON)
CHINA
JIAZAZHI(NINGBO)
HONG KONG
MOSSES(HONG KONG)
SINGAPORE
THING BOOKS(SINGAPORE)
KOREA
Same Dust(SEOUL)
TAIWAN
朋 丁 pon ding(TAIPEI)
moom(TAIPEI)
荒花(TAIPEI)
JAPAN
BOOK OF DAYS(OSAKA)
T-SITE(OSAKA)
MEDIASHOP(KYOTO)
YUY BOOKS&MAGAZINES(KYOTO)
T-SITE(KYOTO)
BOOKS f3(NIIGATA)
NITESHA(TOKYO)
T-SITE(TOKYO)
金柑画廊(TOKYO)
SO BOOKS(TOKYO)
TOKYO CULTUART by BEAMS(TOKYO)
NEW
STILL LIFE
When we are in chaos and anxiety, the urge to do something becomes stronger. So to speak, the boredom of being locked inside early this year prompted this new photo book project, Still Life. In 2020, no matter where we are, we all experienced a similar but not the same predicament. When photographers are constrained by reality, or caught in a battle with boredom and anxiety, we couldn’t help it wonder, without the trigger points of taking photographs, where would their lens go? Will ‘photography’ still happen?
We invited photographers we’ve been closely watching. In this project, an intervention has been imposed onto their freely selected topics, each photographer needs to create their stories indoors using limited equipment. As a result, the photographic collective Still Life includes 13 works from different photographers around the world.
The title Still Life comes from the principal genre of Western art, which was endowed with a beautiful meaning — life is still. Here in this book, ‘Still Life’ is considered as a metaphor for the state of continuing living in this predicament — in the context of the pandemic, a relatively still state we are all in.
Photographers:
Antje Peters, Bobby Doherty, Caroline Tompkins,
Charles Negre, David Brandon Geeting, Geray Mena,
Harley Weir, Makoto Oono, Peng Ke,
Sergiy Barchuk, Sophie Tianxin Chen, Thomas Albdorf,
Xiaopeng Yuan
246 pages
21 × 27 × 2.4cm
Edition of 900
2020
Published by Same Paper
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
AMAZINE / Closing Ceremony magazine 2
Amazine is a photography zine alongside with the second issue of Closing Ceremony magazine. It echoes with the theme of main issue Americano, and the name comes from Amaz0n,We invited five photographers from different countries to join the project, using Amaz0n’s convenient return policy to allow them to purchase shooting props from local Amaz0n website. And to return them after the shooting.
Photographers:
David Brandon Geeting, Zhongjia.Sun, Thomas Roussset,
Makoto Oono, Ryan Duffin, Xiaopeng Yuan
44 pages
2019
Published by Same Paper
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
ARTICLES
See-Zeen (BERLIN)
FIF-BH 2020 #INTERNATIONAL PHOTO FESTIVAL-Room5(BRAZIL)
SELF PUBLISH,BE HAPPY(Works)(LONDON)
SELF PUBLISH,BE HAPPY(Library)(LONDON)
JIAZAZHI PRESS(与谈 / 王欢)(CHINA)
JAPAN PHOTO AWARD 2016
- Simon Karlstetter | Der Greif
I was immediately intrigued by his ability to use light, color and composition – the basic principles of crafting photographic images – to create idiosyncratic pictures.
One thing that particularly struck me about Makoto’s work is the way he addresses our western consumerism in a weird conjunction with living organisms.
Makoto orders »the organism« – as he calls it – on the internet and »injects« them into his images. The images are showing excerpts of our daily surroundings.
The fact that he takes a very interesting, often times close look already makes his imagery special. He uses still images that he neatly composes, but every image comes with a slightly surreal twist – you discover cocoons, broken eggs, moths, ants inhabiting Makoto’s images.
As these »organisms« play an important role, they give the genre of »still life« a very interesting and individual reading.