Fantastical Photographic Maps

If photography is an act of capturing reality, then artist Sohei Nishino has gone leaps and bounds further than most with his “diorama maps.” Influenced by the 18th century Japanese surveyor Ino Tadataka—who spent 17 years creating the first detailed map of Japan during the early 1800s—Nishino pounds the streets of a city for a month, taking thousands of photographs in an effort to immortalize his experience of a place. For three months after photographing, he “re-experiences” the city by holing up in his Tokyo studio, cutting and gluing together the small prints of the city as he recalls it. “It will be the embodiment of how I remember the city, and a diary of the streets I walk,” says Nishino. So time consuming is the process to make his monumental work that Nishino can only to produce three maps a year. Nishino’s work is on view at the Michael Hoppen Gallery in London until April 2nd, and in the slideshow that follows.