MOVING MOUNTAINS

Japanese artist Sohei Nishino maps his Everest journey in epic detail

- DANIELLE DEMETRIOU

There are few more goal-driven activities than the act of climbing a mountain – particularly when its cloud brushing peak happens to be the tallest in the world. Yet when Sohei Nishino embarked on an intense 23-day climbing trip on Mount Everest, his experiences (and his camera lens) focused not on the highest possible point, but on the day-to-day minutiae of the journey. ‘I was not interested in the best shots of Everest that people always go to capture,’ explains the Japanese artist over tea at a gallery in Tokyo. ‘I have always been fascinated by moving and walking. Rather than capturing the final summit, like many mountaineers, I prefer to show the process of getting there. This is a map of my experiences, not anyone else’s.’

The end result of his Himalayan adventure is Mountain Lines, Everest (seen in full overleaf ),a cartographic work that will be exhibited in London in March. It marks something of a sea change for the artist who, since 2003, has become synonymous with his diorama-style maps of 20 cities around the world, from Tokyo to Amsterdam, each painstakingly created from a composite of thousands of black and white photographs, shot during months walking each city’s streets. A contemporary riff on 18th-century Japanese pilgrim maps, the large-scale collages – monochrome and obsessively detailed – offer a unique reflection of the multidimensional complexity of urban landscapes, as experienced through the eyes of the artist.

Nishino created Mountain Lines, Everest using his signature technique (it includes 25,000 photographs, shot using both film and digital cameras) – yet its focus on man in nature marks a shift from his normal urban terrain. In a further visual twist, Nishino steps away from the monochrome and uses colour film to recreate his Everest journey, resulting in threads of greens and reds and golds and slate greys.