Featured Photographer: Yoshitaka Goto’s Surreal Double Exposures
Imagine a world that allows you to be in two places at once. You are standing on the edge of a cliff, watching white rushing water fall hundreds of meters below your feet while simultaneously looking at the vast cityscape of the major city closest to you. When you turn around, you realize that just behind you is the boundless Pacific Ocean. But instead of seeing an infinite horizon, you see industrial skyscrapers touching the stratosphere all around. In photographer Yoshitaka Goto’s world, this is his everyday experience while looking through his camera lens. Using a Lomography LC-A+ camera and it’s specialized attachment, the “Splitzer”, he is able to capture double exposures in half frames that brilliantly capture the stark contrast between the urban world around him and the eternal beauty of landscapes from the other side of the world.
In today’s society, we are living in a world split into two: we have endless amounts of polarizing “fake” news, increasingly hostile propaganda, and large amounts of tribal secularization between groups of people. You would think imagery that captures such disparity between subjects such as the Statue of Liberty drowning in an ocean of ice would be anxiety-provoking or at least spark that uncomfortable feeling of not knowing what to believe. Goto’s double exposures gracefully push us in the other direction: what normally would make us think, ponder, and question the reality presented to us actually produces a visual calmness that seems to tell us: “everything is going to be alright”. His images incite the blunt contradictions of the world around us and it’s through his lens that gives us the hope that even exact opposites can beautifully coexist in harmony.
Interestingly enough, Yoshitaka describes his creative process by quoting Kung Fu master Bruce Lee to relate how we could all be a little more flexible in artistic work, and even our daily lives:
“Be water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” - Bruce Lee
Yoshitaka Goto’s breathtaking point of view didn’t develop overnight. He began his journey into analog photography at 35, after spending a few years shooting with digital equipment. It was after he discovered a book of Toy Cameras that he decided to commence with shooting film photography after realizing that “I felt that it was boring for me to use digital cameras, I became addicted to film cameras (Lomography cameras). Because they gave me freedom”. Soon after that epiphany, he quickly discovered his weapon of choice, the Lomography LC-A+.
For the next three years, he was faithful to his camera and shot it exclusively; however, he didn’t embark on shooting double exposures, which he is now famous for, until he found his attachment of choice, the “Splitzer”. This tool is unique in that it lets you dictate exactly what appears on your photo—and exactly where it appears—by allowing you to slice and dice into halves and quarters. Yoshitaka mastered this technique quickly by combining the cities and landscapes of the world around him into unique displays of imagination. In 2011, he blindly entered the Lomography contest, the “Lomography X Design Taxi Rumble". To his surprise, he won a grant and had his image displayed at the Lomography Hong Kong Gallery. Since then, his photography career has taken off. Over the last 9 years, his work has been exhibited in dozens of group shows, art fairs, and solo exhibitions in and around Asia, including Japan, China, and Taiwan.
What I love most about his work isn’t only that his images are fascinating to stare into, it’s the mindset on his creative process. There is a language barrier between us, so I will simply leave you with some of his thoughts on his process, straight from his soul:
“I don’t express the real world in my multiple exposures, I always create my fantasy (crazy) world in them by using some pieces of real world. I transform shapes, place things that should not be there and think about addition and subtraction for my multiple exposures. I think my acting is not shooting photography, it is drawing paintings. As you know, I use a camera and film, so my works must be photography. But even if I look into a camera viewfinder, I can’t see the final image in it. So a viewfinder is a canvas for me. It means I assemble sceneries like playing with deformable pieces of a puzzle and create my final image that is have multiple exposure on them. I will continue to create works with toughness and flexibility like water.” - Yoshitaka Goto
We could all learn from Yoshitaka Goto’s fluid and zen-like attitude when it comes to art and even our lives. He shows us that no matter what the world presents to you, it’s still your canvas to paint with. Connect with him today on his Website and Instagram!
GALLERY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Behlen is an instant film addict and the founder and publisher of Analog Forever Magazine. Behlen is an obsessive community organizer in the film photography world, including previously launching the independent publishing projects PRYME Magazine and PRYME Editions, two enterprises dedicated to the art of instant film. Through these endeavors, he has featured and published 250+ artists from around the globe via his print and online publications.
He has self-published two Polaroid photobooks -“Searching for Stillness, Vol. 1” and “I Was a Pioneer,” literally a boxed set of his instant film work. His latest book, Searching for Stillness Vol II was published in 2020 by Static Age.
Behlen’s Polaroid photography can be found in various publications including Diffusion Magazine, Fraction Magazine, Seities Magazine, and Polaroid Now (Chronicle Books, 2021). He loves the magic sensuality of instant film: its saturated, surreal colors; the unpredictability of the medium; its addictive qualities as you watch it develop. He spends his time shooting instant film and backpacking in the California wilderness, usually a combination of the two. Connect with Michael Behlen on his Website and on Instagram!
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