Haru Sameshima

Haru Sameshima

Haru was born in 1958 Shizuoka City, Japan and immigrated to New Zealand in 1973. Haru started out working inmall Duniden photography studio and then went to Otago Polytechnic art school in 1980. He completed his BFA in 1982 and then he moved to Auckland and studied at Elam School of fine arts where he then completed his MFA in 1985. When we went to go and visit Haru, his 'Studio' was a cluttered room that almost seemed to be falling apart, I had not looked at his work before I went  but when he showed us his books he has had published I could not believe it! Perfection. He is very good at photographing ceramic and glass objects, I don't get into that style of photography but I must say his work really captured my eye. The way he used studio lighting to almost spotlight the subject, and how the colours have come out almost creamy was really beautiful. I loved his use of reflections and shadowing, giving the effect the object is floating.

Experimentation

Because I didn't have the proper gear to take a photo like Haru, I had to use what I had which was Soy sauce bottles, the inbuilt flash on my camera and a steel top bench. For my experimentation I wanted to create the reflections and shadows Haru has created in his photographs, I also used the idea of using Glass and tin subjects to create the shiny reflections. I started of by using the carpet as the backdrop but i wasn't getting reflections as such more like shadows, I then remembered that last year I did a project on Sugimoto who has similar ideas in his work as Haru, Sugimoto did a photo series on internal gear he uses similar lighting techniques highlighting certain parts and casting shadows.  I tried making the background black like in Haru's images but it didn't work very well, but I was okay with that, I still feel like my experimentation includes Haru's ideas.