An image doesn't disappear when it leaves its creator. It begins another story. With TO-FROMKazusa Sato and Yasuhiro Fukano transform photography into an object of transmission, traversed by time, distance and the link that unites the sender with the receiver.
Presented at the noa gallery arles as part of the Rencontres d'Arles photography festival, TO-FROM is a project conceived by the Japanese creative duo Kazusa Sato and Yasuhiro Fukano in collaboration with SCHWÄR, a German family business renowned for its bespoke craftsmanship in creating buffalo horn eyewear. At the crossroads of photography, design, publishing, and exhibition design, their practice explores what exists around the image: gesture, material, and encounter. Created during the last three months of Kazusa Sato's pregnancy, the exhibition takes the form of a daily correspondence. Each day, the same theme. Each day, three photographs taken in Japan, then sent to three destinations: the SCHWÄR family in Sankt Peter, Paul and Gözde at the noa gallery arles, and Jonas SCHWÄR in Paris. More than a photographic series, TO-FROM observes what happens when the image leaves its author and becomes the memory of a journey.
Each day begins with the same gesture. Observe. Choose. Photograph. A flower. A moon. A tree. A bridge. An everyday object. From the same subject, Kazusa Sato composes three images intended for three different people. Yet, none tells exactly the same story. The light changes. The moment changes. The perspective changes. The photograph then becomes less a capture than an imprint: that of a specific day, a particular feeling, a moment that will never return. Taken on the same day, the three images also bear the trace of their creation. The date inscribed on each one acts as a marker of passing time. Even before being sent, the photograph already preserves the memory of its existence.
Before becoming an exhibited work, an image was an address. It was printed. It was written. It was sent. Each postcard leaves Japan to reach its recipient, crossing borders with a story already begun. The photographic act, therefore, does not end the moment the shutter closes. It continues in the waiting, in the movement, in the instant when someone finally opens the envelope. Today, images pass through our screens without us really paying attention. They scroll by, accumulate, then disappear almost immediately. TO-FROM slows this movement. Here, a photograph is printed, written, sent, and waited for. It regains the weight of paper, the time of the journey, and the value of an object that we choose to keep.
The title TO-FROM already encapsulates the entire trajectory of the project. A departure. An arrival. And everything in between. Because what travels is not just an image. It's the traces of a moment, the words that accompany it, the gesture of the person who chose it, and the attention given to the recipient. Addressed to specific people, the photograph transcends its status as a public image to become almost confidential. It doesn't just seek to be looked at. It seeks to be received. The postcard then becomes a silent letter. A way of saying: I saw this today, from here, and I thought of you.
Created during the final months of Kazusa Sato's pregnancy, TO-FROM also embodies a particular temporality: that of waiting. Waiting for a birth. Waiting for an image. Waiting for a response. In both cases, time transforms what is to come. It builds a relationship even before the encounter. Through this project, waiting is no longer a void between two moments. It becomes a substance. It gives each photograph an added depth, that of everything that transpired before it reached the hands of its recipient.
Through correspondence between Japan, France and Germany, Kazusa Sato and Yasuhiro
Fukano shifts our perspective on photography. The image is no longer simply what is captured. It
It is what circulates. What connects. What remains.
With TO-FROM , a photograph does not end its story when it is created. It begins it.
TO-FROM
Kazusa Sato & Yasuhiro Fukano
