Sohei Nishino walks, camera in hand, through the streets of cities around the world photographing fragmented landscapes, sometimes from high points and others at ground level. Then he prints them and combines them by hand, one by one, creating an immense map built from his memory and the places he has documented. The resulting collage pursues a very different objective than the descriptive purpose of a map: to offer an expressive representation of the city based on the artist’s experience when he walks through its streets and what his camera captures.
Repetition and confrontation are a fundamental part of Nishino’s work process. Social and economic development causes cities to expand and grow without restraint, creating forms and structures which the author responds to by emphasizing and altering their constant repetitions. It is then, during assembly, that experience and memory complete and unify the meaning of his fragmented images in a single element that represents the artist’s vision of the city.