Takashi Arai is a Kawasaki / Berlin based visual artist and filmmaker.
To trace photography to its origins, Arai encountered daguerreotype, and after much trial and error, mastered the complex technique. Arai does not see daguerreotype as a nostalgic reproduction of a classical method. Instead, he has made it his medium, finding it a reliable device for storing memory that is far better for recording and transmitting interactions with his subjects than modern photography.
Since the beginning in 2010, when he first became interested in nuclear issues, Arai has used the daguerreotype technique to create individual recordsâmicro-monumentsâ touch upon the fragmented reality of events in the past. His encounters with surviving crew members, and the salvaged hull, of the fallout-contaminated Daigo FukuryĆ«maru fishing boat, led him to photograph the deeply interconnected subjects of Fukushima, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.