After the first UK lockdown of 2020, during which so many of us were confined to territories that could be described and mapped on the smallest notebook sheet, Sohei Nishino’s ‘Mountain Lines, Everest’ (2019) at Michael Hoppen Gallery, offered an experience of a teeming vastness at the very summit of our world.
Previously best known for composite pictures of entire cityscapes, in 2019 Nishino made a 23 day trek along the well-worn Himalayan route from Lukla Airport to Gokyo Peak, which offers exceptional views of Everest. Carrying over 250 rolls of film and supplementing this with digital images, in ‘Mountain Lines, Everest’ he presents a document of his journey in over 25,000 pictures. Happily, for those who flinch when asked to view more than a clutch or swipe of other people’s holiday snaps, Nishino created a massive birds-eye view panograph within a single two-dimensional frame that mimics the three dimensions of a diorama.
An initial gaze at the 2.7m x 1.5m photographic print, made from his original 4.5m x 3.7m assemblage, offers a view of a strange vista in which pale expanses of water and sky surround what may be an archipelago of small islands. Although there are many false horizons, high above there is a skyline with glimpses of blue sky behind an off-white ceiling of clouds. At distance, anticipation may suggest the possibility of something akin to Bosch’s ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ though closer examination discloses something altogether more commonplace but nonetheless wonderful. Nishino has threaded together composite scenes encountered on his route. Working from bottom left we encounter aircraft at the Lukla airport; groups of school children; lines of monks; fields of crops; pack animals; even the leading athlete breaking the tape to finish the Everest Mountain Marathon and so much more.
In a manner that matches the colours of the terrain encountered during a demanding up-hill journey, the gradually lightening greens of vegetation give way to increasingly darker and then lighter brown hues coupled with the greys and off-whites of rock,snow and cloud. Skies patrolled by raptors and the occasional helicopter become icefalls and mountain torrents with files of pack animals moving along their banks. Focusing on random images may engender a sense of familiarity before another line leads us away into a fresh segment assembled on an altogether different scale. We encounter a busy mountain-scape swarming with activity, where peace and solitude may only be on offer on the less visited peaks
Nishino has said that, unlike most visitors, he did not set out to make a perfect or definitive single image of Everest. He was more interested in the journey and the people residing and earning their livings along the route. He also portrays most powerfully, a sense of the way in which human activity has scarred this terrain. Despite the barriers presented for those aiming for the uninviting collection of yellow tents in the top right-hand corner and onwards towards a summit glimpsed through clouds beyond a formidable glacier, this is a touristic highway where peaceful contemplation will be elusive.
The exhibition also included 17 of the cityscape dioramas that Nishino has made throughout his career and a further new work: ‘A Journey of Drifting Ice, Shiretoko and Magadan’ (2019). Here, Nishino pairs two further aerial panograph views of the Russian and Japanese towns facing each other across the Sea of Okhotsk, where vast blocks of freshwater ice formed in the Amur River float south from Siberia to the northern tip of Japan. The pictures are mounted on jagged, irregularly shaped and unframed aluminium panels measuring 1m x 2.25m, with materiality echoing the sheet ice. Nishino writes in his artist’s statement of his concern that climate change is threatening the very existence of sheet ice floes and presenting a challenge for ‘our divided human society’. Certainly, when viewed together the panels convey a sense of a connectedness that has been ruptured.
Nishino takes us to places, distant yet seemingly familiar, where a vastness of scope and human activity appears stilled for a photographer’s instant. His panographs and cityscapes offer a perfect antidote to the enforced small-scale existence that most of us have been contained within in 2020, while posing questions about the profound impact that humankind is making on our shared planet.
