#81 Hitoshi Fugo - Floating Around

IBASHO presents Floating Around, the second solo exhibition by Hitoshi Fugo, featuring monochrome photographs from 1971–1997. About IBASHO is pleased to present 'Floating Around', the second solo exhibition by Hitoshi Fugo in the gallery, on view from 31 October until 20 December 2026. Born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1947 and raised in Yonezawa, Yamagata from the age of three, Fugo graduated from the Department of Photography at Nihon University College of Art in 1970. Thereafter he was an apprentice of the great Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe, and became independent in 1973. Since his first solo exhibition 'Quiet Days' at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in France in 1974, he has continuously presented his work through gelatin silver prints, exhibitions, and photo books. Fugo is widely known for works such as FLYING FRYING PAN, which transforms an ordinary frying pan into an image of cosmic expansion. Whereas ON THE CIRCLE (Receiving work of the 2010 Ina Nobuo Award), set around a neighborhood water reservoir inhabited by various figures; and WATCHERS, which juxtaposes beholder at waterfalls with those observing urban landscapes to question the fundamental act of seeing itself. These works are constructed from abstract images liberated from fixed notions of time, place, and objecthood, forming structures of expansive, almost cosmic scale. 'Floating Around' is a series of monochrome photographs taken between 1971 and 1997 in Paris, New York, Japan, and elsewhere. First presented in 1976 at Gallery Shunju (Ginza), the series was subsequently exhibited several times, including at Nikon Salon (1979) and in Austria (1982). During the 1970s, while closely observing the work of Eikoh Hosoe and his senior contemporary Daido Moriyama, Fugo became deeply convinced that "photography is not merely a copy of reality," and that "the role of photography is not limited to imprisoning subjects within the present time." After much experimentation, 'Floating Around' became the first series through which he arrived at the conviction that photography could also achieve a literary mode of expression, free from the constraints of presentness and documentation. The creation of this series was inspired when a casual photograph of carp swimming in a fish tank unexpectedly connected with memories of the asthma attacks he suffered as a child. The sensation of receiving bronchial injections, feeling air return to his lungs, and gradually recovering from a negative physical state became linked to images drifting through his mind while being released from an overwhelming gravitational force. Through photography, Fugo sought to visualise those fleeting mental images as they surfaced and disappeared. This exhibition reveals the point of origin at which Fugo established the distinctive style that would later characterise his practice: constructing worlds through sequences of photographs and the movement of afterimages, often resembling literature, music, or architecture. Read more Toggle Photography