Yasuo Kiyonaga

The Kyoto Museum of Photography will host Yasuo Kiyonaga’s exhibition “Sea” from June 16 to August 9, 2026.
The exhibition presents 12 works that capture coastal landscapes from a unique perspective.

When gazing at the ocean, it’s easy to fall into the illusion that time has come to a standstill. Gradually, the seascape before you begins to shift and distort, drawing you into a twisting continuum of time and space that leads into the past. Colors that evoke traces of bygone moments emerge and fade away. This series began with a simple question: what would it be like if those flickering moments of color could be captured in a photograph?

As I imagined, the landscape before me (the present) and the flickering memories of color within me (the past) overlapped to create entirely new seascapes.