Japanese photographer Toshio Shibata is known as the foremost landscape photographer currently working in Japan. In these recent works, Shibata’s signature topographic aesthetic integrates the muted yet dynamic tones of suburban and rural Japan, allowing for an entirely new level of intriguing visual information to be found in those places Shibata has made us so familiar with.

Renowned for his mastery of black-and-white photography, Shibata’s recent turn to color photography is at once surprising while entirely fulfilling. In the black and white photographs of landscapes Shibata has created since the late 1970s, he has explored the formal characteristics of the Japanese landscape. Particular drawn to areas where roadways, sub-developments, irrigation and waterworks wind their way through untouched nature, Shibata has had a keen eye for the peculiarly abstract forms of Japanese suburban sprawl. His skillful use of black-and-white photography essentially transforms these landscapes into a playful maze of contrasts and geometric constructions.

Shibata’s color work is not a break with the black-and-white work he has become so well known for, but rather an evolution of his aesthetic. To his interest in the geometric abstraction of the built landscape, we can now add a subtle layer of color. These colors create a vibrant surface to Shibata’s images. His compositions become both simple and complex patterns of man-made structure and natural greenery, whose allure holds a delicate intricacy similar to post-minimalist Richard Tuttle’s aggregate and multi-textural drawings. The color works evince Shibata’s full maturation as a photographer.

Toshio Shibata exhibits his new color work at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in 2008, and a publication will subsequently be released. Toshio Shibata has exhibited internationally, and has published six monographs to date. His work is represented in every major museum collection in Japan, Europe, and the United States.

Images and text courtesy of Gallery Luisotti.

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