HECTARE is pleased to present “swaying still life,” a solo exhibition by photographer Haruyuki Shirai. In this exhibition, Shirai will unveil new works focusing on the themes of room and still life, created using a digital camera that he has uniquely modified.

Until now, Shirai has created a number of works using modified film cameras, including “Panorama” and “Rays of the view,” capturing spontaneous scenes in the city. Immersed in urban environments, he has recorded the accidental movements of people and landscapes, exploring the gaps and fluctuations that arise between seeing and photographing.

In contrast, his new works turn inward, focusing on the room—a private, bodily space. Having recently become a father, Shirai speaks of how this experience has led him to reflect more deeply on his inner life. The subjects of his photographs are still life objects placed within the room, such as flowers and mobiles. These objects are given slight movements and photographed using his specially modified camera, which responds in unpredictable ways to motion. This camera creates unexpected distortions and image shifts, rendering originally “still” objects into unstable images through time and movement. Intangible presences such as wind passing through the room or light filtering in through a window emerge as chance appearances.

Shirai’s work subtly displaces the inherent mechanism of capturing in photography, offering a humorous perspective that invites us to reconsider the things we take for granted and the frameworks through which we perceive them.