2025
BORN FROM THE LIGHT
Unique c-print photogram (Godzilla toy, sunlight, artist’s breath), metal frameInstallation: 102x83x1 in. (81 of 8x10 in.)
Born from the Light is a photographic meditation on mutation, memory, and the many ways a single subject can be fractured across time and perspective. Consisting of 81 C-print photograms, this series was created by exposing light-sensitive paper to sunlight and the shifting shadow of a small Godzilla toy–a figure that, for me, serves as both icon and self-portrait.
In this work, I documented the toy’s shadow from multiple perspectives, rotating and repositioning it over time. Each exposure was timed by the length of a single breath—an embodied marker of life’s fragility. The fiery red and yellow shadows contrast with black backgrounds, evoking the inverted burns left on Hiroshima’s surfaces: shadows burned into stone, memories seared into flesh.
Through this fractured grid of 81 views, the series resists the idea of a singular narrative or static memory. Even the shadows splinter and shift. The work asks: What is real? How does perspective alter truth? How do stories mutate over time?
Linking to my project My Irradiated Friends, which also explores radiation’s lingering impact, Born from the Light examines how trauma and memory refuse containment. By turning Godzilla into a surrogate self-portrait, I reflect on the impossibility of separating victim from witness, or inheritance from identity.
Ultimately, this work is a meditation on the paradox of light itself: its power to illuminate and to destroy, to record and to erase, and to shape the shadows that carry history forward.
2025
BORN FROM THE LIGHT
Unique c-print photogram (Godzilla toy, sunlight, artist’s breath), metal frame
Installation: 102x83x1 in. (81 of 8x10 in.)
Born from the Light is a photographic meditation on mutation, memory, and the many ways a single subject can be fractured across time and perspective. Consisting of 81 C-print photograms, this series was created by exposing light-sensitive paper to sunlight and the shifting shadow of a small Godzilla toy–a figure that, for me, serves as both icon and self-portrait.
In this work, I documented the toy’s shadow from multiple perspectives, rotating and repositioning it over time. Each exposure was timed by the length of a single breath—an embodied marker of life’s fragility. The fiery red and yellow shadows contrast with black backgrounds, evoking the inverted burns left on Hiroshima’s surfaces: shadows burned into stone, memories seared into flesh.
Through this fractured grid of 81 views, the series resists the idea of a singular narrative or static memory. Even the shadows splinter and shift. The work asks: What is real? How does perspective alter truth? How do stories mutate over time?
Linking to my project My Irradiated Friends, which also explores radiation’s lingering impact, Born from the Light examines how trauma and memory refuse containment. By turning Godzilla into a surrogate self-portrait, I reflect on the impossibility of separating victim from witness, or inheritance from identity.
Ultimately, this work is a meditation on the paradox of light itself: its power to illuminate and to destroy, to record and to erase, and to shape the shadows that carry history forward.
© 2023 by Kei Ito.
Created on Editor X.
Sungazing
2015 - Ongoing
108 of 8”x10” prints, Scroll: 12” x 150’ to 220’ depending on the edition
On August 6th 1945, at 8:15 AM, my grandfather witnessed a great tragedy that destroyed nearly everything in Hiroshima. He survived the bombing, yet he lost many of his family members from the explosion and radiation poisoning. As an activist and author, my grandfather fought against the use of nuclear weaponry throughout his life, until he too passed away from cancer when I was ten years old. I remember him saying that day in Hiroshima was like hundreds of suns lighting up the sky.
In order to express the connection between the sun and my family history, I have created 108 letter size prints and a 200 foot long scroll, made by exposing Type-C photographic paper to sunlight. The pattern on the prints/scroll corresponds to my breath. In a darkened room, I pulled the paper in front of a small aperture to expose it to the sun while inhaling, and paused when exhaling. I repeated this action until I breathed 108 times. 108 is a number with ritual significance in Japanese Buddhism; to mark the Japanese New Year, bells toll 108 times, ridding us of our evil passions and desires, and purifying our souls.
If the black parts of the print remind you of a shadow, it is the shadow of my breath, which is itself a registration of my life, a life I share with and owe to my grandfather. The mark of the atomic blast upon his life and upon his breath was passed on to me, and you can see it as the shadow of this print.