Nicolas Boyer was a photographer for 2 years after graduation from the Gobelins School of Images – Paris in 2003. Then a parenthesis of 12 years working as a creative in advertising. From 2016 to 2021, he joined the Studio Hans Lucas, one of the main French groups of professional photoreporters.
Giri Giri is a game of representations on the images conveyed by Japan through different societal archetypes. A series of snapshots of the “exotic” imaginary that has been built up over a century since the opening of the Meiji era.
Artist: https://www.nicolasboyer.top/
Publisher: Hatje Cantz (2021)
This series is a play on the images conveyed by Japan through different societal archetypes: geisha, robots, dolls, salarymen, kimonos, yakuzas, sumos, etc. These are the images on which the exotic Western imagination has been built for a century and a half, following the opening up of Japan at the end of the 19th century during the Meiji era – whose name is derived from the kanji “light”, the foundation of photography.
It is also a play on the concept of photographic truth in the fluctuating relationship that a documentary work can establish with fiction. As filmmaker Chris Marker wrote, “Inventing Japan is just another way of getting to know it”.
Nicolas Boyer
Book Specs: Hatje Cantz | Editor Richard Volante | Graphic design by Yves Bigot | English, French | 265 pp., 102 ills. | Hardcover | 22.00 x 28.90 cm | ISBN 978-3-7757-5097-4. Available here.