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413 × 273.5 mm
80 pages
Hardcover
ISBN 978-4-903545-21-9
December 2007

CANARY presents a beguiling body of work by a young photographer. The constructed images are steeped in a world of magical realism charged with a primal and animistic immediacy. The world in Shiga Lieko's hands seems to be pregnant with dynamism and movement, which at times can also be threatening. Throughout the work, the viewer is prompted to speculate how the photographs were created. What was her process? What aspects have been captured by the camera and what has been adulterated. It seems only fitting that after the book's release, Shiga revisited her work and created a limited-edition photobook as a companion, CANARY-MON. In this smaller volume, she presents an reading or explanation of each of the images but with the distance of hindsight. Therefore the plates themselves, rather than direct reproductions of the original images, are photographs of the photographs. These plates are then tipped in and only loosely adhered to the page, implying tenuousness. The typography too fades in part from the page. So even in her meta-text on her own work, the process and work remains in a state of flux between presence and non- presence, vibrant color and fading away.