Daiwa Foundation Japan House, 13/14 Cornwall Terrace, London NW1 4QP
2 June 2008 - 25 July 2008

Late night openings (until 8.00pm): 19 June and 10 July 2008
Organised by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

During the last five years, this British architectural photographer has taken over 2,500 images of contemporary architecture in Japan. A selection of these photographs will be exhibited for the first time at Daiwa Foundation Japan House.

As a photographer, Sumner has long held an interest in contemporary architecture. The tension involved in capturing an often fleeting moment within a permanent image is the focus of his work and is what has drawn him to the innovative contemporary architecture of Japan.

The unexpectedness that occurs in Sumner’s work also brings its own delight. The lines created by the criss-crossing of electric wires that run over Tokyo’s skyline, for example, are captured in his photograph of a slick grey façade in a recent building by Tadao Ando (see above). In another photograph, a perfect circle appears as a reflection, a ghost or watermark, in a modern library designed by Toyo Ito.

Roland Barthes once wrote that architecture is always dream and function. These images may lack the physical or material reality that function brings to architecture but they offer instead something more meditative and enigmatic. In their dream-like fragments, the familiar is made foreign and the foreign, familiar. The physical boundaries disappear and ownership is temporarily suspended.

Sumner’s keen eye, in this sense, convolutes with the desires of another culture (one that is quintessentially foreign to him). And so it is through the eye of an outsider that we see contemporary Japanese architecture reflected in a new light.

The exhibition is curated by Yuki Sumner and supported by ANA.

Edmund Sumner (b. 1972, London) specialises in architectural photography and established himself as a freelance photographer in 1995. He has developed a body of work, some of which has been shown in galleries across the UK. His recent solo exhibition, entitled Human Landscape, explored the issues surrounding a human presence in various landscapes. The wide range of interests he displays through photography blurs the boundary between what is considered ‘commercial’ and ‘art’ photography.

Yuki Sumner is a writer on contemporary architecture. After graduating from Central St Martins College of Art and Design in London, Yuki worked for various architects, including David Chipperfield and Caruso St John, where she developed an interest in how architecture is represented in the media. She is currently writing a book on contemporary Japanese architecture.

Edmund Sumner’s website
Related event: ‘Outside the Box: seminar on contemporary Japanese architecture’, 15 July 2008

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