Culture
Vigil
A night festival documented across three years and one very long evening.
- Client
- Nord Editions
- Discipline
- Culture
- Location
- Kyoto, Japan
- Year
- 2022
The commission
The festival happens once a year and lasts a single night. Photographing it properly took three of them, spread across three years, because the first two taught us where not to stand.
The final night was shot almost entirely by lantern and fire. We used no supplementary light at all — partly out of respect for the ceremony, mostly because the light already present is the subject.
The work was published as a limited monograph of sixty images and shown at two festivals of photographic books.
How it was made
Challenge
A single-night ceremony, extremely low mixed light, dense crowds, and a strong obligation not to interfere with what was happening.
Approach
Three years of attendance, two of them without publishing anything. Available light only, fast primes, and positions agreed in advance with the organisers so the camera never sat inside the ceremony.
Result
A sixty-image monograph in a limited run of five hundred, shown at two photobook festivals and now held in three public library collections.
Sequence
Credits
- Photography
- Atelier
- Publisher
- Nord Editions
- Design
- Studio Kessel