My book Wabi Sabi is about the freedom of viewing the world in our own unique way. Its about capturing the insignificant details that we would usually ignore or not notice, and appreciating the pure and spiritual elements of the imperfect details of our lives. The Japanese term, Wabi Sabi fully explains what the series is about in a simple way. The definition of the term, “a way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and accepting peacefully the natural cycle of growth and decay” concludes the project well. Throughout the book I focus closely on the tiny details of objects and scenes that we witness all the time. An example of scenes that I’ve included is the Sky at evening time, and the movement of the sea. Within these scenes Ive  focused on and framed particular elements that interested me. My aim was to fragment specific details that were insignificant yet beautiful.

I wanted my book to be simple yet powerful. I wanted the images to make the viewer think about what they are looking at. My aim was to create a thought process in the viewers mind to make them reflect more on the imperfect and insignificant details of our day to day lives.

For the front and back cover I wanted an image that would draw the viewer in. Something that wasn’t too busy but had an appealing aesthetic. I am very happy with the cover that I choose because the warm colour is calming and links with my theme of spiritual connotations within tiny details. I choose to use a small font size for the title because I didn’t want it to over power the image. The image was meant to be the focus point and I believe I have achieved this.

I wanted the style and genre of my book to be in a similar style to Rinko Kawauchi’s book Illuminance. Her book is simple and flows really well from image to image. Although her images don’t link immediately, the colour, texture and form of each image leads onto the next in some way.  This is what I wanted to achieve within my photo book. I wanted to create a narrative within the book using the sequence of images as the story line. The aspects that I linked from image to image are colour, shape, tone and subject. I didn’t want images placed next to each other to be too similar, but I also didn’t want them to have no connection at all.

Most of my images are colorful because I wanted the viewer to be drawn in by the use of bright, pale colours. Although I wanted to stick with an overall aesthetic throughout the series of images, I also wanted the book to contain some contrast. I did this by also including black and white images to change the sequence and flow slightly. I choose specific images to be presented in black and white because they contained a lot of detail, such as the close up image of the skin. Since the image had a lot of detail, it was interesting enough without the use of colour to draw the viewer in.

The images above and bellow are examples of different connections I made between images. The image above contains an unusual perspective of a foot which contains wrinkles and decaying skin. I choose this image because it represents my project well because I’ve captured the beauty of an imperfect thing. The other image is a close up of water. The movement, reflection and shape is what I aimed to capture within the image. I decided to place these two images next to each other because of the texture and shape. The structure of the skin, and the shape of the wrinkles on the foot connect well with the shape of the water.

The image below is another example of a connection I made between two images to create a flow and narrative. Both images are close ups of particular objects that we see everyday. The image on the left is a close up of a flower, and the image on the right is a close up of a hand. Although the objects a completely different as subjects, I managed to make a connection between the two images by linking the shape, colour and texture.

I am very happy with the final outcome of my photo book because I have managed to portray and represent my ideas and way of thinking very well. My main aim was to create a book that made the viewer reflect on each image and make connections with what they see in the image in their own lives. I wanted to focus on the tiny details which I have managed to do very well. I also aimed to express the beauty of things that we viewed to be imperfect.