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New York in My Life

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SATOMI SHIRAI was born in Tokyo, Japan and worked as a freelance photographer until she moved to New York in 2004. Her photographs deals with the expatriate’s experience, with two vastly different, clashing worlds, Tokyo and New York City.

“New York in my life” is also about cramped domestic conditions, where the inhabitants of these most of the time tiny places appear and disappear, vanish and seem to even loose their own identity. Often the people shown in SATOMI’s pictures can’t be recognized. They are anonymous inhabitants of faceless living spaces and yet one can discover so many reminiscences in her images about national origins, cultural uniqueness and individual personal histories.

SATOMI SHIRAI’s  images literally grow on you and one may realize that in a big city, no matter where on earth, we become also a reflection of the spaces we live in. Her subtle humour that she transmits through her images, relieves her pictures from a potential “heavyness” and ultimately makes the viewer feel good, makes him or her almost a guest, thus absolving him or her from any suspicion of voyeurism. – by Micheko Galerie