Kohei Maekawa learned photography at the NUC of Art from 2012 to 2018 and currently resides and works in Tokyo.
In 2015, he began working as a pizza deliveryman, and this experience inspired his work "Yard," a series of photographs of gardens and house exteriors decorated with various objects created by residents in the suburbs of Tokyo. This work was featured in the 2020 Young Portfolio exhibition at the Kiyosato Photo Art Museum. Maekawa's next project, "Walking Ghosts," is photographs of numerous scarecrows created by elderly people living in depopulated villages. Both of these works have been reviewed by photography critic and editor Kyoichi Tsuzuki in his e-zine Roadsiders' weekly.
Through his photographs of strange houses and landscapes, Maekawa explores the egos, thoughts, and problems of the individuals who inhabit these obscure locations away from main roads. The objects found in these photographs serve as a prominent expression of the residents' wishes and hopes for society and are, according to Maekawa, a language of their own, essential for understanding the people living on the fringes of society. As such, his peculiar photographs give voice to the voiceless individuals inhabiting these landscapes.
