The title of this exhibition - “Kokoro” or “True Flower” - carries some of the feeling the photographer holds toward the flowers he has been working with all these years.
Ever since he took up photography, Takashi Namiki has dedicated himself solely to photographing flowers. He has sometimes wondered why he has always shot flowers and never landscapes or people. What he has come to recognize is that by turning his lens only toward flowers which he honestly feels in his own heart to be “beautiful,” he has been honestly shooting moments that touch his heart. He says that for him, that is only natural.
“Flowers have a certain power to quiet people’s minds. The more I photographed them, and the more people looked at my photos, I learned that this power is stronger than I had thought. And if I don’t get the shot in that moment that resonates within me, then I am unable to capture that ‘power of the flower’ in an appealing way.” This sense of his is expressed in the title “Kokoro” (True Flower).

The term “flower photography” usually makes people think of a shot with a macro lens of the center of a flower, or a telephoto close-up of brilliant blossoms. In Namiki’s works, however, the approach often differs from that concept, or the flowers are portrayed from a standpoint that turns that concept around. A single white flower standing in shadow in the forest may show up rather dark, or conversely, flowers may be bathed in such glaringly bright sunshine that they seem overexposed from the orthodox photography viewpoint. In shadow there is a dark aspect, while flowers enveloped in bright light are pleasingly light-drenched. This is Namiki’s world, where the goal is to honestly show what he feels, just as it is.
　It is the season of gorgeously blooming flowers, of greenery shooting vibrantly upward - a fine time to savor the world of flowers exactly as they feel, the way Takashi Namiki has been gazing at them all along.