In Ephemeral Moments (2025), Japanese photographer Naohiro Ninomiya brings together images from his everyday life that evoke sadness, nostalgia, tenderness, and mystery.
Selected from the negatives he produces daily, the photographs are carefully printed on Japanese Mino-washi paper. According to the artist, the paper’s irregular texture makes the images appear to emerge from his indistinct memories.
Born in Nagoya in 1969, Ninomiya has lived in France since 1998. In 1996, he left his job as a sales representative to work on a farm in Hokkaido. He subsequently left Japan and settled in France, where he has lived ever since.
His work draws inspiration from the emotional ties he maintains with his family, his home in Japan, and his everyday life in France. He compares his process to that of an archaeologist: his movements with the developer resemble the motion of a brush across objects from the past. Through the physical presence of his prints, he seeks to restore value to memories in response to images that are consumed too quickly.
In this series, a view that awakens a childhood memory serves as a starting point. Ninomiya selects photographs for the feelings they evoke and finds in washi paper a surface whose texture contributes to the representation of those memories.
The works are gelatin silver prints on Mino-washi paper, measuring 24 × 16 cm, with frames measuring 34 × 26 cm. Each work is produced in an edition of eight. [Official Website]
