Golden Persimmons II—Brian Kanagaki

Documenting absence

A table of fruit; a skyline, devoid of life; a ladder framed against sky—these laconic scenes, documentary snapshots of everyday life and its alienated torpor—make up the latest publication from Brian Kanagaki via London-based Palm* Studios. Taken over the course of six years, and split into three parts, the book—more akin to a catalogue, with the names of locations indexed at the work’s end—inhabit the space of melancholia; in softened monochrome.

There’s a visual similarity to the work of post-war German author and photographer W.G. Sebald, whose novels were punctuated by decontextualized black and white images which he himself had taken. The doorways of Terezin, a Czech concentration camp; piles of documents; bric-a-brac in a junk store window. Each scene conveyed not a presence but an absence; a void that surged around the image—escaping its frame. Likewise, Kanagaki’s images—this time mostly without text, excepting the index—reduce human existence to scenes without humans, though they carry the imprint of their having been present.

Golden Persimmons II—Brian Kanagaki

Documenting absence

A table of fruit; a skyline, devoid of life; a ladder framed against sky—these laconic scenes, documentary snapshots of everyday life and its alienated torpor—make up the latest publication from Brian Kanagaki via London-based Palm* Studios. Taken over the course of six years, and split into three parts, the book—more akin to a catalogue, with the names of locations indexed at the work’s end—inhabit the space of melancholia; in softened monochrome.

There’s a visual similarity to the work of post-war German author and photographer W.G. Sebald, whose novels were punctuated by decontextualized black and white images which he himself had taken. The doorways of Terezin, a Czech concentration camp; piles of documents; bric-a-brac in a junk store window. Each scene conveyed not a presence but an absence; a void that surged around the image—escaping its frame. Likewise, Kanagaki’s images—this time mostly without text, excepting the index—reduce human existence to scenes without humans, though they carry the imprint of their having been present.

Golden Persimmons II—Brian Kanagaki

Documenting absence

A table of fruit; a skyline, devoid of life; a ladder framed against sky—these laconic scenes, documentary snapshots of everyday life and its alienated torpor—make up the latest publication from Brian Kanagaki via London-based Palm* Studios. Taken over the course of six years, and split into three parts, the book—more akin to a catalogue, with the names of locations indexed at the work’s end—inhabit the space of melancholia; in softened monochrome.

There’s a visual similarity to the work of post-war German author and photographer W.G. Sebald, whose novels were punctuated by decontextualized black and white images which he himself had taken. The doorways of Terezin, a Czech concentration camp; piles of documents; bric-a-brac in a junk store window. Each scene conveyed not a presence but an absence; a void that surged around the image—escaping its frame. Likewise, Kanagaki’s images—this time mostly without text, excepting the index—reduce human existence to scenes without humans, though they carry the imprint of their having been present.

Golden Persimmons II—Brian Kanagaki

Documenting absence

A table of fruit; a skyline, devoid of life; a ladder framed against sky—these laconic scenes, documentary snapshots of everyday life and its alienated torpor—make up the latest publication from Brian Kanagaki via London-based Palm* Studios. Taken over the course of six years, and split into three parts, the book—more akin to a catalogue, with the names of locations indexed at the work’s end—inhabit the space of melancholia; in softened monochrome.

There’s a visual similarity to the work of post-war German author and photographer W.G. Sebald, whose novels were punctuated by decontextualized black and white images which he himself had taken. The doorways of Terezin, a Czech concentration camp; piles of documents; bric-a-brac in a junk store window. Each scene conveyed not a presence but an absence; a void that surged around the image—escaping its frame. Likewise, Kanagaki’s images—this time mostly without text, excepting the index—reduce human existence to scenes without humans, though they carry the imprint of their having been present.

Golden Persimmons II—Brian Kanagaki

Golden Persimmons II—Brian Kanagaki

Documenting absence

A table of fruit; a skyline, devoid of life; a ladder framed against sky—these laconic scenes, documentary snapshots of everyday life and its alienated torpor—make up the latest publication from Brian Kanagaki via London-based Palm* Studios. Taken over the course of six years, and split into three parts, the book—more akin to a catalogue, with the names of locations indexed at the work’s end—inhabit the space of melancholia; in softened monochrome.

There’s a visual similarity to the work of post-war German author and photographer W.G. Sebald, whose novels were punctuated by decontextualized black and white images which he himself had taken. The doorways of Terezin, a Czech concentration camp; piles of documents; bric-a-brac in a junk store window. Each scene conveyed not a presence but an absence; a void that surged around the image—escaping its frame. Likewise, Kanagaki’s images—this time mostly without text, excepting the index—reduce human existence to scenes without humans, though they carry the imprint of their having been present.

Golden Persimmons II—Brian Kanagaki

Documenting absence

A table of fruit; a skyline, devoid of life; a ladder framed against sky—these laconic scenes, documentary snapshots of everyday life and its alienated torpor—make up the latest publication from Brian Kanagaki via London-based Palm* Studios. Taken over the course of six years, and split into three parts, the book—more akin to a catalogue, with the names of locations indexed at the work’s end—inhabit the space of melancholia; in softened monochrome.

There’s a visual similarity to the work of post-war German author and photographer W.G. Sebald, whose novels were punctuated by decontextualized black and white images which he himself had taken. The doorways of Terezin, a Czech concentration camp; piles of documents; bric-a-brac in a junk store window. Each scene conveyed not a presence but an absence; a void that surged around the image—escaping its frame. Likewise, Kanagaki’s images—this time mostly without text, excepting the index—reduce human existence to scenes without humans, though they carry the imprint of their having been present.