Known for capturing traditional fighting and sporting festivals in Japan and beyond, photographer Keijiro Kai's latest exhibition, Clothed in Sunny Finery, at Zen Foto Gallery, showcases work shot at Hadaka Matsuri (Naked Festivals) across Japan where participants shed most of their clothing and collide with each other in a throng of chaotic bodies. "As you can see, the participants are naked," writes Kai. "Casting off their clothes and gaining control of their body, the naked participants roar, dance, spill their sweat and odor upon each other, and collide with each other flesh against flesh.
I throw myself into the chaos and shoot frantically. In the crowd, it is difficult to identify where the body odor comes from, so it has a strange presence that is eerier than the roaring voices and the sweat. When the sweat-soaked skin touches another and the smell of body odor engulfs the crowd, a sense of discomfort and fear appears. The sense of discomfort and fear sharpens the senses of the people in the crowd and awakens their bodies — a body stripped of consciousness and ego that is and isn’t one’s own. The meaning and purpose of living in society (while being unsure whether that exists in the first place) are blown away, and the wildness of human nature is exposed."
The work in Clothed in Sunny Finery showcases a selection of work from a photo book of the same name also published by Zen Foto Gallery.
