Leica Camera Japan is pleased to present Dream / Silence — Between the Dream and the Silence, a solo exhibition by photographer Yasuhiro Ogawa at Leica Gallery Tokyo.

The exhibition brings together selected works from two of Ogawa’s acclaimed series, The Dreaming and Into the Silence, presented within a single exhibition space.

The title ”Dream / Silence — Between the Dream and the Silence” reflects the artist’s enduring fascination with memory, travel, and silence. Moving between these two bodies of work, visitors are invited to experience the resonances of dream and silence, wandering and stillness.

This exhibition features original prints produced with the artist’s close involvement throughout the printing process. The light, landscapes, and traces of time encountered during his travels are ultimately realized as physical works through the medium of the photographic print. We invite visitors to experience the rich tonalities and quiet afterglow embodied within these photographs.

Yasuhiro Ogawa is what one might call a "wandering photographer," in that he doesn't seek anything specific when he sets out in search of images, but prefers to trust in what the world around him offers as a gift.

While his various projects are linked to more or less defined territories, the strictly documentary aspect is secondary in his approach. It is more accurate to see it as a long, silent wandering through the heart of contemporary Japan, a wandering free from any reductive clichés.

With Ogawa, we journey slowly, taking the time necessary for immersion, discovering with him what a less receptive mind would most likely have missed. Nothing spectacular or exceptional, but a succession of simple wonders, accessible to anyone willing to give time its due.

In a long sequence without a true beginning or end, the seasons follow one another, the landscapes unfold: snow-covered mountains or mountains lost in mist, stormy seas, sodden streets and forests, sandy gardens, gas stations appearing in the night, curtains separating inside from outside… The travelers lose themselves in their thoughts, alone in the world. Crows caw. The trees don the hues of autumn. A child draws on the condensation that has formed on the windowpane, another waves to the passing train… It is therefore a question of wandering. Of linear or winding paths. Of emptiness, of fleeting apparitions. Of men, women, and children glimpsed more than encountered. Of colors both strange and natural.

Alain Dehogues, Director, Box Galerie, Brussels