マルゴ・ガ シ

Margot Gaches

Through the crack in a century-old wall, rays of light pass, projecting the ghosts of an outside world into the empty house's space. This is how the story of Houses begins, a photographic project exploring the growing number of akiya in the Japanese archipelago. These akiya hold the remnants of past lives. They become Ma (間), latent zones haunted by the traces of former inhabitants and their social practices. When a house fades from the landscape, an entire memory disappears with it. How can we convey the nostalgia imbued in these threshold-houses, and what is their future within contemporary memory? To address this question, the empty houses are transformed into camera obscura. Silver prints of the images projected into the room through the camera obscura are created. In this way, the akiya-obscura takes on a new symbolic meaning. From dwelling, it becomes a technical object, a catalyst for traces. Houses holds a series of silver prints taken by the houses themselves and a series of architecture photographs printed on kozo paper.