Editor's Note: This photograph can be used in conjunction with the lesson plan Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York.

The artist Katsuhiro Saiki began his career as a painter, but was soon fascinated by the transient possibilities of the medium of photography. Turning away from the concept that photography is necessarily a realistic mode of expression, Saiki explores the conceptual and illusory potential of photographic images without the use of technological photo manipulation.¹

In many of his recent works, Saiki retains the realistic integrity of his photographic images, while manually reforming them by cutting and merging portions of each picture. The works in the exhibition Making a Home are part of a series the artist is currently working on, Study for Metropolis, in which he photographically documents Modernist architecture in New York City. Saiki then physically constructs these photographs into 3-dimensional, geometric, sculptural forms. In this way, the artist also repurposes the camera from a device used to capture verisimilitude to a device used to alter reality.

Born in Tokyo, Japan in 1969, Saiki lives and works in Queens. He moved to New York in 2002.

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¹ Shiner, Eric C. & Tomii, Reiko. Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York. New York: Japan Society, 2007, p.134.
tsuhiro Saiki
Study for Metropolis #2 
2006
C-print, paper board, watercolor
4 O x 23 # x 4 W" (12.1 x 60 x 11.1 cm)
Collection of Fujiwara Fumiko and Tatsuo, Tokyo
Photo: Katsuhiro Saiki