Laxalt Photography

SENBAZURU

«I will write peace on your wings and you will fly around the world to carry this message».  In May 1955, when Sadako Sasaki writes this sentence in her diary, she’s a little girl and probably doesn’t know Eluard and his “Liberté j’écris ton nom” (1942); and she’s dying from leukemia in a hospital in Hiroshima. Her only hope is to finish her Senbazuru.

In Japanese, ‘Senbazuru’ stands for the art of making one thousand paper cranes in origami on a wire. The legend says that the person who makes a Senbazuru is granted one wish by the Gods. 

This project aims to create my own photographic Senbazuru and share it with you. It consists of 36 photos that together contain exactly 1000 cranes. The name of each photo is the number of cranes depicted in it. Fly around the world and carry this message of peace.


 

A tribute to Sadako Sasaki

The legend says that the person who makes one thousand paper cranes is granted one wish by the Gods. Unfortunately, Sadako Sasaki was not that lucky. She was 2 years old during the bombing of Hiroshima. Nine years later, she was diagnosed with leukemia. From her hospital bed, she began making paper cranes in the hopes of reaching one thousand so that the gods would eventually heal her. She went about her task using all available paper – notebook paper, gift wrap, toilet paper – anything she could get her hands on.

At her 644th crane she died.

Upon hearing the sad news, her classmates decided to finish the Senbazuru. After completing the 1000th crane they buried her with her wish. When they found her diary, they read this sentence: «I will write peace on your wings and you will fly around the world to carry this message.»

 

 

PRINTS

The photographs from the Senbazuru project are available in two different types of prints and formats. Fine art pigment prints created by the artist ensure perfect color consistency across all photos. Black and white silver gelatin prints, limited to an edition of 3, are hand-tinted by the artist using Japanese black tea for an authentic, handcrafted, and timeless finish.

 

Fine Art Pigment Prints

Format: 30x40 cm // 11,81 x 15,75 in 

Prints:  on Hahnemühle Photo Rag – UVprotected

Edition:  9 + 2AP

Printed, signed, dated andnumbered by the artist. 

Silver Gelatin prints

Format: 17x17 cm // 6,7 x 6,7 in

Type: Black&White Silver Gelatin prints toned with black Japanese tea 

Edition:  3 + 1AP 

Silver Gelatin prints made by Picto under supervision of the artist, prints toned, dated, signed and numbered bythe artist. 


For more details about the "Tea toning" technique and a video explainer, see THIS PAGE

 

BOOK

Book Story

Senbazuru, an art book inspired by Zen and Japanese Calligraphy whose pictures lead to a form of poetic mediation. This photographic project is insipired by the life of Sadako Sasaki and her fight against leukemia with only one weapon : a Senbazuru.

See an online version of the book  HERE

"I will write peace on your wings and you will fly across the world to carry this message”.

Book Description

The book is printed in full color with a canvas cover and a picture embossed in the cover. In the book, you'll find a 8 pages insert with the 36 pictures and 1000 cranes on the same sheet of paper. You'll own your own Senbazuru!

In 240 x 340 format, the body of work consisting of 80 pages and 4 cover pages is printed on Artic Pure White paper of 170g which gives excellent color rendering and print quality for the images.

A binding with a square back sewn glued to ensure good maintenance of the book for many manipulations. Printed on the presses of the Pbtisk printing company established in the Czech Republic, one of the largest European printing houses.

The book is published by Empreintes & Digitales Publisher under the Artistic Direction of Jean-yves Camus.

 

BOOK Senbazuru - COLLECTOR EDITION 

Signed - With 20x20cm Photo signed and numbered - 80 pages - 36 pictures

€350

This is the Collector print run limited to 36 books and images. The Senbazuru project has 36 images representing in total 1000 cranes......so a full Senbazuru. For the collector edition, only 36 books are available, each one comes with a different image from the project. Be the first and choose your image! Books, pictures and insert are signed, named by the choosen photo title and numbered from 1 to 36.

BOOK Senbazuru - Signed - 

With a 14x14cm photo signed - 80 pages - 36 pictures

€90

With the book, you will get a 14x14cm original picture from the book, signed.

BOOK Senbazuru - Signed -

 With 9x9cm Photo not signed - 80 pages - 36 pictures

€45

With the book, you will get a 9x9cm original picture from the book, not signed.

BOOK : Senbazuru - Signed - 

36 pictures - 80 pages

€35

 

HOW TO ORDER THE BOOK

Use this form to contact me and provide the following information:

- Book chosen :
€35 // €45 // €90 // €300 

- Delivery option:
France €8 // Worldwide €12

I will then provide you with either a Paypal link or wire details. 

Merci!!

 


STATEMENT: ABOUT BLACK, LINE, SPACE AND TIME

It is unlikely that Sadako Sasaki was aware of these sublime verses from Paul Eluard's poem "Liberty", written in 1942: "On the fields on the horizon / On the wings of the birds / And on the mill of shadows, I write your name." And yet, irradiated in Hiroshima, dying, she continued to make her paper cranes and in 1955, only days before her death, she wrote the following words in her journal: "I will write peace on your wings and you will fly across the world to carry this message".

A story at once sublime, mythical, dramatic. It is this shock of extremes, this amplitude of feelings that inspired my own Senbazuru series. A young girl; leukemia. A nuclear bomb; paper cranes. War; peace. Death; life. White; black.

Through an approach inspired by Japanese calligraphy and Zen, my intention is to bring us back to the most essential: black, line, space and time.

Black

Contrasting images so that details disappear focuses the gaze on the black dots formed by the cranes and the emotion on the line that separates the space. But the space is not entirely empty. In Japanese calligraphy, black ink represents only part of the completed work. The paper is consubstantial to it, and therefore constitutive of the work as much by its texture, its color as by the space it represents.

In Senbazuru, the sky, filled with this delicately Japanese color, opens the space and frees the viewer to mindfully imagine what exists out of view through a form of meditation.


But this uniform sky also reveals the power of black. Of ink. To bring out in relief these cranes which become as much birds as lines, dots or kamis, those thousands of spirits of the Shinto religion, which can be a river, a tree, a memory of a person or a simple stone.

As Soulages created a snow landscape with only lines of black ink to accentuate the white of the paper, this sky focuses the gaze on the intense black of the cranes, like a back-light in front of a dazzling atomic mushroom. "Black is a violent, active, striking color" explains Soulages.

Line

By rendering details of the represented elements invisible, Senbazuru accompanies the viewer in a reading of that which is purely form and line, encouraging us to distance ourselves from a naturalistic or colorist vision. Although cranes always fly in a V-shape for greater efficiency, this form is only seldomly present in the photographs: the lines are straight lines, curves, arabesques ... and more conducive to contemplation. And the cranes themselves are reduced to "lines". They become dots, simple forms whose repetition forms a new alphabet, new musical notes, a new calligraphy of hope. This simplification of the image feeds the imagination and echoes Sadako's fierce desire to finish her Senbazuru: to focus on the essential, find paper, make one more crane... and hope.

Cranes are not all that are conveyed by the simple line. The other elements, trees, branches, threads, through this play of contrasts, lose their primary characteristics and become core points of focus that structure and give a dreamlike meaning to the image.

This shift in photography from an immutable movement of life to a representation by line leads the viewer towards what Hachiro Kanno defines as "permanensence", that subtle balance between the ephemeral and the eternal.

Space

For Japanese calligraphy, if beauty lies in the composition, the brushstrokes and the color of the ink, the most important aspect becomes the synergy between positive and negative space. In Senbazuru, an often delicate balance exists between emotion evoked by the birds themselves and the emptiness that surrounds them. These legendary cranes embody the essence of the imagination that provides a sensitive energy for the balance of space. This is illustrated in the photo named “Four” where four cranes are depicted as occupying a small space in the middle of the photo — and one appears to want to free itself from the others. By breaking the homogeneity of the group this bird brings a sense of power to the image, defining the necessary balance with “meaningful emptiness”.

Balance within the space is equally defined by the rhythm and vibrations in the succession of cranes in the image. Posed as such they resemble a sequence of calligraphic strokes — a line, space, line — that resonates with the Japanese concept of “ma”. The architect Isozaki Arata defined “ma” as “the natural distance between two or more things existing in a continuity, as the interval, space or void between two elements, or successive actions; denoting either temporal or spatial extension, consciousness of a sense of place, and focus on the intention of negative space” (from “The Concept of Space-Time in Japan”).

Thus, the “ma” could be seen here as being the interval between the cranes, by which they are both separated and connected. It defines space, intensity, rhythm, as a celestial musical scale.

Time

Cranes have long been a source of fascination. Their majestic migrations have punctuated seasons and created myths. The times we live in now, however, have changed what felt unchangeable. 

As if deaf to the changes of our modern world, migratory flocks of cranes have become literal migrants forced to change countries to survive the effects of climate change. This phenomenon has been evident for many years, where global warming has forced cranes to search for more tempered environments to spend the winter. In the tales from my own childhood, cranes spent the winter in warm countries, which meant North Africa. The rising temperatures then pushed them to Spain and, more recently, France. 

Are these winged migrants precursors, birds of ill omen? Perhaps what are today cranes, could tomorrow be men.

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