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Gaijin

By David Favrod

Introduction

For this edition of Photostory Weekly we present the story of Gaijin, made by David Takashi Favrod. David received the first prize in the conceptual category of the Viewbook PhotoStory 2009 awards, and was published and exhibited last year. We talked with David about how the work came together and asked Marcel Feill, curator of FOAM Museum in Amsterdam, to give his view on this work.

David Favrod

Basel, Switzerland Conceptual photographer focussing on identity and cultural subjects.
www.davidfavrod.com

In Context

Turning visual cliches into an intelligent reflection

by Marcel Feil

In this series, Swiss-Japanese artist David Favrod elaborates in a very intriguing and playful way on archetypical Japanese images, ranging from aesthetic landscapes to witty images of sumo wrestlers and geishas. Turning visual clichés into an intelligent and contemporary reflection on the complex relationship between the self, the other, image and memory, Favrod questions both the Japanese identity and his personal relationship towards this country that is both known and utterly alien to us.

Marcel Feil

Curator FOAM Photography
Museum Amsterdam
www.foam.nl


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CREATION - ABOUT THE IDEA AND PROCESS

"Gaijin is a fictional recital, a tool for my quest for identity"

David Takashi Favrod was born on July 2, 1982 in Kobe, to a Japanese mother and a Swiss father. When he was six months old, his parents decided to move to Switzerland, more precisely to Vionnaz, a little village in lower Valais. As his father had to travel a lot for his work, David was mainly brought up by his mother who taught him her principles and her culture. When David was 18, he asked for dual nationality at the Japanese embassy, but they refused, because this is only given to Japanese women who wish to obtain their husband’s nationality. "It was from this feeling of rejection and also from a desire to prove that I am as Japanese as I am Swiss that this work was created", says David. "Gaijin is a fictional recital, a tool in my quest for identity, where auto-portraits imply an intimate and solitary relationship that I have with myself. The mirror image is frozen in a figurative alter ego that serves as an anchor point. The aim of this work is to create ‘my own Japan’, in Switzerland, from memories of my journeys when I was small, my mother’s stories, popular and traditional culture and my grandparents war recitals.

David created the photographs within the first half of 2009 in Switzerland, but it's not finished. David continues to work on it, perhaps his whole life. David designs the pictures mostly in his head and then starts searching for fitting subjects and locations. Most photographs are made using available light with a Mamiya RZ camera. Sometimes David uses a Profoto 600 flash to clear up some parts in the picture.

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