Sakiko Nomura: ROOM 416

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Room 416 presents the work of Japanese photographer Sakiko Nomura around the polaroid. Sakiko Nomura builds her images in the shadows. Photographing her models in places as bare as their bodies, intimacy is at the heart of her work. Her images evoke the muffled atmosphere of rooms that we recognize without having visited them, the rustling of sheets, the swish of a curtain that is opened to let a ray of light in. She deals with love, sex, relationships and the fragility with modesty and gentleness. Combining the Polaroids here in a trio, mixing places and times, Nomura has created short stories that reinvent themselves according to the viewer's imagination. The polaroid, which belongs to both the private and professional worlds of photography, has a magical quality. Because of its physical and unique aspect, it becomes a small space-time window that transports those who stand in front of the photograph into the moment of the shot. It is this slightly different relationship to time that Nomura enjoys: "I believe that our relationship to polaroids can change depending on where we look at them, at what moment," she says. The book has been designed so that the reader can either keep the initial sequence or compose their own triptychs, in order to adapt the images to his or her present feelings.