Jiro Konami

CCProjects is pleased to present Namedaruma, the first solo exhibition in the United States by New York-based Japanese photographer Jiro Konami. The show emerges from a book of photographs Konami made in collaboration with i-D magazine and The Black Eye Patch, who worked with the artist at the end of 2020 to shoot a vastly popular but previously unseen Japanese rap group, also called Namedaruma. For the project, Konami traveled two hours north of Tokyo to the musicians’ hometown of Kumagaya City in Saitama prefecture. In the book comprising his shots of the band, Konami writes of violence he experienced in the US in 2020 due to bigotry against Asian people, which swelled horrifically around the coronavirus pandemic. Of Namedaruma themselves Konami writes, “My heart was stung by their red gaze. The needle has been sticking in my heart since then.”

Konami came to prominence in Japan on the forefront of a new generation of young photographers electing to use analog film in our digital age. The artist skillfully makes use of both the evidentiary quality and the uncontrolled haze of analog, which he treats almost as a living organism prone to imperfection, error and surprise. Konami has spoken about the importance of a vigilant and voluminous practice as a photographer; he was once advised by Takuma Nakahira to “take one photo every three steps while walking,” and to “be a camera.” In an age where our idea of photo has migrated from documentation to concoction, Konami’s work stands as a reminder of something grimier, more natural, and more palpably real.

The photographs on view at CCProjects emerge almost entirely from Konami’s trip to Kumagaya City. The members of Namedaruma grew up in this tough, industrial city in the 90s and 2000s, at the same time that the Japanese government cracked down with extreme force on gang activities. A part of the younger generation who would usually enter Yakuza gang life, the band instead began their defiant artistic collaboration, rapping about their highly contraband marijuana use, lost friends and street life.

Konami’s photographs of Namedaruma were the first the musicians allowed to be taken and shared in mass culture. He was welcomed into spaces never before seen: the rappers at home with their families and even bathing at their local bathhouse. Confrontational portraits mix with a still life of glittering golden jewelry, a huge, ominous sky, urban landscapes, and an interior painted reproduction of a landscape that draws our attention to the kitschy absurdity innate to human design. Konami’s unprecedented access and raw style bring our minds back to actual flesh and felt human connections. His work suggests that castaway seediness can indeed come to fruition, that those forced underground will find a way to flourish, and it also reminds us of the thumping, unconventional beauty of a larger natural world that witnesses all of our strange projects here.

Jiro Konami has won several awards, including the Prospect Prize at the Epson Color Imaging Contest, and the Fuji Photo Salon the New Face Prize. His work has been featured in The New York Times, i-D Magazine, Interview Magazine, Vogue Japan, and Wired. In 2021/22, Konami presented a solo exhibition with accompanying monograph, “Burning Drop,” at the PARCO Museum, Tokyo.