Birthday beach

I've come to rely on stories to help me accept that no moment lasts forever.

A scene can never be fully appreciated, no matter how long you look at it. The passage of time won't allow it. As you take in its details the light continually shifts, making you forget the colors you saw seconds before. The harder you look, the more aware of this effect you become. The mind, perpetually struggling to keep up, can only create elaborate recollections of what it has seen.

Time is no kinder to the light captured in photographs, yet their overlapping shadows can be suggestive of daydreams. I scan them for story material just as though I were skimming a dictionary for words within a dream. Terms do not define reality, but details can connect and spread out like a net to bind time.
Moments contained within stories may be revisited as often as you like. You can discover them or lose them, time and time again. The places we stand will someday disappear. Our feet and the ground are only constructs. To truly see something is to go beyond this dimension.

Looking is but grasping at phantasmagoria.

Birthday beach

Stories of items washed ashore.
The coastline of Funabashi has been formed by perpetual development and reclamation.
A beach on Achill Island in Ireland was washed away in a storm, only to reappear suddenly after 30 years.
Birthday beach utilizes photographs, short stories and various other media to connect these seemingly separate stretches of land.


Yuki Shimizu

1984　Born in Chiba, Japan
2007　Graduated from Musashino Art University, Japan

I've come to rely on stories to help me accept that no moment lasts forever.

A scene can never be fully appreciated, no matter how long you look at it. The passage of time won't allow it. As you take in its details the light continually shifts, making you forget the colors you saw seconds before. The harder you look, the more aware of this effect you become. The mind, perpetually struggling to keep up, can only create elaborate recollections of what it has seen.

Time is no kinder to the light captured in photographs, yet their overlapping shadows can be suggestive of daydreams. I scan them for story material just as though I were skimming a dictionary for words within a dream. Terms do not define reality, but details can connect and spread out like a net to bind time.
Moments contained within stories may be revisited as often as you like. You can discover them or lose them, time and time again. The places we stand will someday disappear. Our feet and the ground are only constructs. To truly see something is to go beyond this dimension.

Looking is but grasping at phantasmagoria.


Birthday beach

Stories of items washed ashore.
The coastline of Funabashi has been formed by perpetual development and reclamation.
A beach on Achill Island in Ireland was washed away in a storm, only to reappear suddenly after 30 years.
Birthday beach utilizes photographs, short stories and various other media to connect these seemingly separate stretches of land.


Yuki Shimizu

1984　Born in Chiba, Japan
2007　Graduated from Musashino Art University, Japan