Continuing anthropological and social photographic work initiated in 2016 in Cuba and which he will continue in 2024 in Israel, Pierre-Elie de Pibrac (born in 1983) traveled across Japan between December 2019 and August 2020 to produce the series Hakanai Sonzai (“ Hakanai Sonzai ”) . I myself feel like an ephemeral creature." During this immersive investigation, the artist went to meet individuals seeking to express the singularity of a personal story through their participation in the photographer's project: yakuza, survivors of Fukushima, hikikomori (people living cut off of the world and others, most often cloistered in their rooms) or “evaporated” having opted for a voluntary disappearance…

Pierre-Elie Pibrac initiates these intimate exchanges by sending blank notebooks and disposable cameras, maintaining a diligent correspondence with his models before working with them in natural settings and lighting.

As a counterpoint to these large-format photographic paintings, a set of black and white photographs offers sumptuous details of eternal Japan: waterfalls, ponds of unfathomable depths, canopies of oppressive density, abandoned architecture...

Inspired by the Japanese tradition of Ukiyo-e, the subtle art of ink and woodcuts, these black and white photographs refer to the acute awareness of the precariousness of existence, present in the notion of Mono No Aware , sensitivity for the ephemeral omnipresent in Japan, where the random forces of a capricious and mystical nature, with its recurring terrestrial and marine earthquakes, weigh on the lives of the inhabitants.