Ryo Iwao
Ryo Iwao (b. 1997, Gifu, Japan) is a photographic artist and contemporary artist based in Japan.
For Iwao, photography is not a tool to document the external world, but a medium for introspection.
Through the act of photographing, he explores how his own existence encounters the world, and how time, light, and the body intersect within that encounter.
Beginning with digital photography, Iwao gradually became drawn to prewar cameras and pinhole photography, discovering in them a sense of accumulated time.
The long exposure inherent to pinhole cameras allows light and time to settle slowly onto the image, transforming photography from a momentary capture into a record of duration.
His work oscillates between two states:
a sense of unity with nature, where boundaries dissolve, and a sense of separation within society, where structures and distance become visible.
Photography becomes the site where these two temporalities coexist.
Iwao approaches photography not as a finished image alone, but as a spatial and conceptual practice.
The processes of printing, framing, installation, and collaboration are treated as integral elements of the work itself, forming a contemporary “factory” of creation.
Through his practice, Iwao seeks to observe the gap between the self shaped by society and the self that resonates with nature, and to quietly inhabit the space where they momentarily align.