Following a twoday

Following a two-day art trip to London, #LiekoShiga abandoned the photography school in which she was enrolled in Japan because, as she’s said, ‘I found their way of talking about photography to be so constrained.’ Shiga resumed her studies in the UK, and retrained her focus over the following five years. The above work, ‘Hello’ (2004), from the series ‘Lilly’, is one of hundreds of images of residents living in an East London council flat shot by Shiga against an exterior wall covered with black cloth. Shiga achieves the work’s uncanny, dreamlike quality in the darkroom by manipulating each print as it develops. The aesthetic is inspired by the early days of photography, when images purporting to capture paranormal presence were popular. –– Lieko Shiga, ‘Hello’, 2004 (detail), C-print photograph via @TakaIshiiGallery | Galleries 2019 #artbasel #artbasel2019