Kazuaki Koseki

Artist Statement

Photography, for me, is an act of listening — to the quiet rhythm of life that flows beneath visible forms.
Through the lens, I try to trace the pulse of existence: the moment when light, air, and memory converge.

The landscape is never merely scenery.
It breathes, decays, and regenerates — as we do.
Each image is born from the encounter between the inner and outer world, between my own consciousness and the earth’s timeless cycle.

I am drawn to the impermanence of things — mist dissolving into air, a leaf turning to flame, snow becoming water again.
Within these transformations, I sense the memory of all beings: the endless interconnection of light and life.

My work is rooted in Yamagata, in northern Japan — a land shaped by snow, mountains, and silence.
In this region, the unique topography gives rise to landscapes where the breath of countless living species can be felt.
The deeper I venture into the forests, the more I perceive traces of time that nature itself has inscribed —
and the remnants of a profound bond that must have once existed between humans and the natural world.
To me, that continuity is nature itself.

From this place, I explore the dialogue between human presence and nature’s vast continuity — between what changes and what endures.

Photography, in this sense, is not a means of preservation but of participation.
It allows me to enter the current of time itself, to recognize that we, too, are part of this ever-returning cycle —
the cycle of being.