Your name
Makoto Oono
Place of birth
Chiba, Japan
Place where you live now
Tokyo
3 words to describe you
Balance, secrecy, rebellion
Why do you take pictures?
To erase memories.
Where do you get your inspiration?
The real city.
Who are your influences?
My teacher is the photographer Yoshiko Seino. She is best known for advertisements for Comme des Garçons, but she committed suicide after publishing two books of photographs. We met when I was 21 years old and I will never forget many of her philosophies.
What determines the subject matter you choose?
My upbringing.
What impact would you like your art to have?
The hope of forgetting sadness.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
Van Gogh's paintings
Is there anything you want to add?
Photography is about seeing.

The re-signification of the photographic still life by Makoto Oono

Text by Nadia E Carrizo

How to Buy Life, the artist's recent series brings together eight successive photographs that explore an emerging nature in hypnotic scenarios with kitschy overtones.

"You don't take a picture. You make it." This popular quote by photographer Ansel Adams, highlights the real meaning of photography as art. Like the brush and canvas, the photographic medium has become a way for artists to express their ideas through composition, staging, and the construction of new narratives. At this point, Makoto Oono's ability to create universes is undeniable. His artistry is present in every compositional element.

Makoto Oono is a Japanese photographer based in Tokyo and the winner of the JAPAN PHOTO AWARD. His work has been featured in many international art fairs and exhibitions and is part of Still Life, an art photography book published by SamePaper in 2020.

Oono’s ongoing project, How to Buy Life, is exclusively inspired by his visits to different countries in Asia, where he buys and captures local creatures indoors. In his photographs, Oono creates unique scenes in which he brings out the beauty of the inanimate, transforming souvenirs into protagonists of an imaginary reality. These images can be called "fabricated" still lifes, where the inevitable influence of painting and modern art is evident. So it would not be unreasonable to place Oono’s work in the line of the progressive modernization of art that has been done for many centuries on the threshold of the great genres of history.

The still life is based on nothing more than the transformation of everyday objects into a demonstration of artistic skill. But from the paintings of Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne to the present day, artists have taken it upon themselves to deconstruct its meanings to renew the academically accepted.

The photographer's choice of this ancient and traditional genre is not in vain. The composition, the combination of colors and the approach give his creations a painterly character that could be interpreted as a re-vindication of the kitsch aesthetics of this series. This accompanies a sign of modern societies, which is individuality. Personal tastes are not linked to any mandate; it is about the pure freedom of people's choices, the notion of naïf aesthetics, simplicity, and the rejection of technical academicism.

The creatures exhibited by Oono are presented as still lifes but also re-signify the aesthetic quality of the decorative. This is not only present in the creatures as souvenirs, but also in the furniture and the hypnotic patterns that play a fundamental role.

Habitat is a universal concept for human beings. Regardless of whether their daily environment is rudimentary or sophisticated, each person tries to modify it to suit his or her taste with a firm intention: to appropriate it. And the home is the first place people make their own according to their aesthetic background. Thus, Oono’s photographs enhance everyday visual enjoyment. Contrary to the beauty-art binomial, the photographer's proposal brings with it an aesthetic, without distinction of social class, cultural or educational level. The worldview is left out of the creation and contemplation of these pieces.

From religious, natural, evocative, or mystical objects, the similarity of highly saturated colors is not the only thing that characterizes these decorative elements. Another postmodern cue in Oono’s series is consumerism. Material souvenirs of tourist destinations are a custom that carries on the development of the mass consumer market, promoting cheap but sentimental effects.

Oono exquisitely presents portraits of unusual still life in dreamlike interiors that are a perfect reflection of postmodern cultural practices. From the exposure of cheap consumerism to the modernization of the still life, Oono’s photographic practice is a breath of fresh air in the contemporary scene. Ultimately, one wonders whether it is simply a representation of a visually saturated culture, even a celebration of it; or whether the photographer is denouncing a superficial, inexpressive, and impersonal society. 

How to buy life
(Project statement)

Japanese photographer Makoto Oono puts the "life forms" purchased and captured on the Internet into daily life, and sets up a temporary chaotic space, and then uses photography and "collecting" techniques , continuing to produce images that are both barbaric and aesthetic.

Artificially bred varieties of white strawberries and spools, mucus left by snails, scraps of paper and cartons, cats and fish, dried leaves and paste...

Makoto Oono cleverly pairs foreign objects to form a unique combination. He dexterously controls the tonality of the colors, spreads out all kinds of unique forms, and tries to explore the possibility of "natural portraits" with new methods. At first glance, the picture may be colorful and beautiful, and the composition of the picture is confusing, which makes it difficult to determine the subjects.

"What I am interested in is an unpredictable state of photography."

As an observer, Oono is watching the life changes of the living organisms in front of him from the standpoint of a photographer.

When he temporarily places life in a special new order, he creates a brand-new potential relationship, and then transitions to an extended contrast to the ecosystem, and implies a potential law of life.

makoto oono
@oonomakoto