Japanese photographer Naruki Oshima’s newest series and monograph, haptic green, brings nature into sharp focus. Kehrer Verlag has just released a monograph of this celebration of nature.

To achieve his effect, Naruki “applies a complex technical process to deconstruct an image into more than two hundred elements. The process is like a scan; with the camera fixed at a precise point, the artist methodically shoots a series of images starting from the bottom left corner of the frame, up to the top right hand side, applying various focuses. After reassembling theshots and erasing its overlaps and distortions, the finalized image offers a view on nature which a human eye could never have.” The word “haptic” refers to visual and tactile sensations that involve none other than touching a scene with the eyes, grasping a scene with the eyes.

Naruki studied at Kyoto Saga Art College, Kyoto City University of Arts, and Thomas Ruff ’s class at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. His work has been widely acclaimed and exhibited worldwide, including Paris Photo 2008, Venice Biennale, the 9th International Architecture Exhibition 2004, the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2003 and many others. He currently lives and works in Kyoto, Japan.

©Naruki Oshima

The artist describes the purpose of this series as to experience when you walk into dense green woods, and when your eyes reach out to scarcely recognize its object. Two different perspectives of distances exist here, one a close-up focus to see partial details of the tree, the other a distant focus to see the whole perspective of the tree. The tree vaguely embodies itself swaying in between these two distances, and its collective ensemble of various senses of the leaves, branches, trunks – no longer the fixed symbolic recognition of trees – interweave among each other as an existence.

©Naruki Oshima

©Naruki Oshima

©Naruki Oshima

©Naruki Oshima

©Naruki Oshima

©Naruki Oshima

©Naruki Oshima

©Naruki Oshima