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“The Fourth Wall” is the imaginary invisible wall at the front of the stage in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play.

Hiroyuki Takenouchi has set his sights on presenting audiences with metropolitan landscapes; scenes of nature full of flowers and flora; nonchalant depictions of daily life around him; and his distinct clique of friends. By directing one’s line of sight directly at the subject, Takenouchi confronts the viewer with the loneliness and alienation of youth, a sense of unease and doubt towards the way he or she perceives normal objects, asks “What is diversity?” “What is the artificial?” and attempts to lay bare the true essence that lies dormant within all things.

As a child with two working parents, Takenouchi spent a lot of time at home by himself, saying that in order to keep himself from coming to terms with the full extent of his own loneliness, alienation, and weakness, he would build up walls around himself.
It was with this mentality that he took up the camera, and much like others who do the same, found it to be a tool that allowed him to connect with others while also allowing him a means to express his true nature.

“In the past, even when I was taking pictures I would think about what kind of individual I was going to become, but before I knew it one day I realized that when I was shooting I would stop thinking about myself,” says Takenouchi. Just like he says here, when shooting photos he becomes free of obstructive thoughts, and by carefully fixing his gaze upon each object that surrounds him one-by-one, he sheds the person that tries to keep others from knowing his own weakness, who tries to act strong, who is frightened by the gaze of others, allowing for a plethora of soft gazes and sharp observations to pour out from within him, drawing out all the fascinating, attractive qualities of the subject, all things appearing equal in his eyes and thus revealing the beauty of existing in that particular time and place.

Hiroyuki Takenouchi was born in Tokyo, Japan, 1982. Graduated from the Photography of Nihon University College of Art in 2008. He was the recipient of the honorable mention of the New Cosmos of Photography in 2008 and the special award of Shiogama Photo Festival in 2009.