El Dorado of “PowerShot G7 X Mark Ⅲ”
Teppei Sako Solo Exhibition
2025.02.01（sat.）- 02.28 (fri.)
open on fri., sat., & sun. 12:00-18:00
appointments are available on weekdays
Special thanks to CANON
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eN arts is pleased to announce a Teppei Sako solo exhibition – “El Dorado of “Power Shot G7 X Mark Ⅲ”- from February 1st to February 28th, 2025.
In 2016, Teppei Sako exhibited for the first time at eN arts at showcase#5, the firth in the annual group exhibition series specializing in photographic and video works curated by Professor Minoru Shimizu. Since that exhibition, I have been paying attention to the works he presents at exhibitions and on social media, finding that Sako’s ongoing success has been remarkable. Among his recent work, I am a very much a fan of the “El Dorado of Power Shot G7 X Mark Ⅲ” series, which Sako posts on Instagram (@teppei_sako). There he compiles 10 snapshots taken from his perspective of everyday scenes, regular daily life that everyone sees, for each week and uploads them along with the events of the same week. When I read those posts, I enjoy them as if I were looking back at my own picture diary.
The text that Professor Shimizu wrote in the press release at showcase #5 in 2016 states, “When we look at a snapshot, are we looking at the photographer who was supposed to be in front of the scene in the photo? “To see” is to step outside of yourself and overlap with the photographer.” This means that you can endlessly look back at someone else’s picture diary, just as you would your own picture diary. This may be the case. One day, I suddenly had the urge to fill eN arts with “El Dorado of “Power Shot G7 X Mark Ⅲ”, so I asked Mr. Sako to hold this solo exhibition.
Sako says that when he is taking photographs, all that comes to mind is “Ah!” and “Oh!”. He won the Grand Prix Award at the Canon New Cosmos of Photography in 2015. The next year, when he announced his new work “Sword and Sandals” at INTERVIEW 2016, he said the following: “My video works after ‘Made of Stone’ were about the decisive moment when you were about to take a snapshot, and the photo opportunity was extended with an “ahhhhhh” and a length of time inserted. On the other hand, in the “Sword and Sandals”, there are multiple “Ahs” at the same time at the subject that the camera is pointing at, and a decisive moment is inserted in small pieces like “ah, ah, ah, ah”
This exhibition will feature photographs and video works created from the more than 70,000 snapshots taken for “El Dorado of Power Shot G7 X Mark Ⅲ”
Please enjoy Teppei Sako’s transformation from “ah!” to “ahhhh” and “ah, ah, ah, ah” at eN arts.
Naomi Rowe | eN arts
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“El Dorado of “Power Shot G7 X Mark Ⅲ”” is a project started in August 2022, in which I look back at a week’s worth of my daily snapshots, select 10 of them, crop them to square, and present them on Instagram with diary-like text.
“Power Shot G7 X Mark Ⅲ” is the name of Canon compact digital camera I use for snapshots, which I have been using continuously since April 2020. On the other hand, “El Dorado” is the name of the main character in the comic book “Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!” by Sumito Oowara, the title of the fourth animated film produced by Midori Asakusa and students of Eizouken, “Tanuki’s Eldorado”. I was sympathetic to the theme of rejecting “good versus evil,” but I must confess that I was more stimulated by the word and its jarring effect. I watched “El Dorado” (1966, Paramount Pictures), directed by Howard Hawks, on August 23, 2024, and did not find any connection point with my own efforts, nor did I find the film itself very interesting.
I majored in printmaking when I was in art school, and I learned that a rough sketch (original or manuscript) is necessary for printmaking at any rate, and that without it, production cannot begin. I also learned a lot from watching the he professor in my laboratory, who worked on a huge amount of drawings every day, and at the same time, always carried a camera to take snapshots. Even as I graduated from college and continued to work with video and photography, those things were always stuck in a corner of my mind, which led me to ask the question of how I consume my days and led to the “Declaration of Emergency,” a special measures law against the new coronavirus that was passed on March 13, 2020, and When the “Declaration of Emergency” was issued on April 7, 2020, and I was ordered to work at home from April 13, 2020, my daily efforts began with the answer of “going out every day and taking snapshots or video materials”.
Whether it is a photographic or video work, when I start production, having a certain amount of stock material and spending time looking back at it has naturally led to changes in my own work. Both the “LCD Zombies” series, which I began in 2021, and the “Slivers on the Window” series, which I began in 2023, are based on the problem of snapshots and how snapshots are combined.
In this exhibition, my last solo show in Kyoto in eight years, I plan to exhibit mainly snapshots taken during the period when I continued to present “El Dorado of “Power Shot G7 X Mark Ⅲ”” (as of December 15, 2024, there are 71,092 snapshots). In addition, I plan to exhibit photographic works created using those snapshots as material, video works, and my self-published book “CHILL TOWN”.
I would like to invite everyone to see how “looking back at the photographs” will result in my works.
Teppei Sako
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