NATURAL NATURE
NATURAL NATURE
CREDITS
Human beings can be defined as a part of nature, yet most people seem to ignore their existence within it, and praise only a nature full of green. As an antithesis of this ‘old’ perception of nature, Japanese photographer Mankichi Shinshi (1984) started his project Natural Nature, affirming that our ordinary human lives and egocentric impact can be seen as an appearance of ‘modern nature’.
Shinshi explains: “I think people feel an excessive guilt to the advancement of modern society”. In his photographs, he captures scenes in which we see manmade nature, like tightly mown grass fields, and lonely plants placed in modern spaces next to objects of modern society like cars, concrete buildings and outdoors escalators.
By displaying these alienating contrasts, Shinshi shows the interaction and connectedness of modern society and nature, but also make us uncomfortably aware of how different this modern nature is: tame, and extremely organised.
