Photographer and filmmaker Mako Miyamoto cultivates a world of his own creation in his latest exhibit: Jitaku. Making expert use of infrared color and character design, the artist captures epic landscapes as you've never seen them before. The effect is so immersive and the authenticity so palpable that you become an instant traveler in this unique realm, where the familiar and alien exist at a crossroads. Bringing the experience further to life is a short film of the same name. It too transports the viewer to a parallel world and follows the fully realized characters therein. As suggested by the infrared effect—which exposes light not visible to the human eye—this exotic world might be sitting under our very noses.

“Concepted and shot in quarantine during the spring and summer of 2020, Jitaku explores the idea of home as not only a place but also an emotional connection, whirring in the spaces between our atoms. Our collective search and yearning for a return to our youth through a journey back to or recreation of that place is the primary theme explored in the work. Home is both the origin as well as the destination, a Möbius strip mapping out our lives, picked up, traced, and followed through starlight and storm, threading us through the dark. Our lives, a collection of light and shadow, congregated at the rim of the morning, looking up into the fading stars spun across the sky” - Mako Miyamoto

Jitaku will be on view at Stephanie Chefas Projects through December 19, 2020. Stephanie Chefas Projects is located in Portland, Oregon at 305 SE 3rd Avenue on the second floor of the Urban Row building.