John Sypal "Zuisha"

Dates: February 9 (Fri) — February 24 (Sat), 2018

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Zen Foto Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of John Sypal’s Zuisha series from February 9th to 24th, 2018. The exhibition will feature a selection from his first photobook under the same title published by Zen Foto Gallery in December 2017.

The first time the earliest of these pictures were exhibited was under the title An Endless Attraction. I felt it a proper summary of my feelings for her, and for photography itself. It’s about photographing life and living through photographing - all without having to think of any of these things as separate issues.

In his succinct yet sublime book "A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics,” Donald Richie explains a literary genre called zuihitsu. It’s a type of informal essay created through an approach where it is not "the assumptions of the writer's controlling mind that are followed but, as the Japanese phrase it, the brush itself."

I think the camera makes a pretty good brush.

ーJohn Sypal

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Artist Profile

John SYPAL

Born in Nebraska, USA in 1979. After graduating from the University of Nebraska he moved to Japan in 2004 and began exhibiting his photography in 2005. His main exhibitions include “Nebraska, The Good Life” (Nikon Salon, 2005), “The Difference Between” (Konica Minolta Plaza, 2007), “Gaijin Like Me” (Nikon Salon, 2008), “195” (Kaido Ribbon, 2010), “John Sypal Photographs” (Yokohama Sogo Leica Shop, 2015), and “An Endless Attraction” (Leica Tokyo, 2022). In 2010 he joined Totem Pole Photo Gallery, where he has been exhibiting his ongoing Zuisha series since 2012. From 2008 he began Tokyo Camera Style, through which he shares Japanese photographic culture online. The ongoing project was compiled and published as a photobook by Thames & Hudson in 2015.

Publications & Prints