Masato Seto
The photograph above is from ‘Picnic’, a series of images by Masato Seto. You can see more photographs from the series on Sato’s website, here.
The photographs in ‘Picnic’ are quiet, and at first some seem a little flat — beguilingly undramatic and directionless; but the more of these picnics we see, the more Seto’s evident fascination with these situations takes hold. As I looked through them Sato’s fascination became my fascination, and I went into each new photograph prepared and ready to probe and to pry. The photographs almost always contain two people, and the people are always together, or in close proximity: the title of the series could easily be changed to ‘Couples’. However, the series is not about couples, it is about picnics — it is not about the relationships themselves, but about the situations, the lived-in situations, in which we find these couples. A combination of topological study of calm intimacy and slyly suggestive glance at (not into) the lives and relationships of strangers, the more we see of the series, the more poignant (and more poignantly narrative) the series becomes. I find it magical.
On a slight tangent: while looking at Seto’s ‘Picnic’ photographs, I was reminded me of a photograph posted on Flickr a little while back by migue1ito. That photograph also depicts a picnic, of sorts, and is also quite magical:
It would not fit into Seto’s series: it is a looser, more relaxed shot, more vernacular and less probing; but it shares something of the calm mysteriousness, the sense of something going on we’re not privy to (yet are able to view, albeit as an outsider) that I see in the ‘Picnic’ photographs. I will be looking at Seto’s photography more in the future, and at migue1ito’s, too.