SoheiNishino is one of the rising gems of contemporary Japanesephotography. Discovered in 2008 by Michael Hoppen, 28 year oldNishino’s extraordinary photographic dioramas, monumental in size, mapout the artist’s personal impressions of the  world’s major cities inseveral thousand intimate details.

Nishino’scollages are not precise geographic recreations, but an imperfect mixof landmarks and iconic features conceived from his personal‘re-experiencing’ of a city. Never before exhibited outside of Asia,Michael Hoppen Contemporary will present the Diorama Map series for hisinaugural European show, featuring ten of Nishino’s most strikingcollages as well as his latest creation: the map of London.

Whenphotographing London, Nishino walked the entire city on foot for amonth, wandering the streets and recording from every possible angle,from building tops to get an overview of the Gherkin, to shooting instep with the Queen’s Guard marching on the Mall. In total he used over300 rolls of black and white film and took over 10,000 pictures.

Inthe following three months Nishino selected some 4,000 of thesephotographs, hand printed in his own dark room, which he thenmeticulously pieced together with scissors and glue in his Tokyostudio. The result was an aerial view of London, which was then reshotas a completed collage to produce a final image in photographic form.This lengthy and painstaking process, all done by hand, only allows forthe creation of three maps per year. Nishino’s re-imagination of a citypresents a convincing record despite its geographical inaccuracies, amap embodying the  intricacies of a city through the eyesand recollection of an outsider.

Nishino’sprocess began during a portfolio review when studying at OsakaUniversity of Arts, when he realised he was far more interested in themass of photographs not selected, than the few that were actuallychosen to be displayed. For him, the whole selection was more of a truerepresentation than the refined final edit of one photograph. This,together with his love of walking and the influence of 18th CenturyJapanese  cartographer and surveyor Inō Tadataka, led to Nishino’screation of the first diorama map of his hometown of Osaka.

Inaddition to the Diorama Maps, Nishino has also created two colour worksusing the same process, ‘i-LAND’ and ‘Night’. These collages arecomposites of images taken in multiple Japanese cities, photographedand recreated in the studio as fantastical urban landscapes.

In2005, Nishino received the top award in the Canon New Cosmos ofPhotography competition for his first five Diorama Maps. Since then hiswork has continued to receive critical acclaim, particularly forappearances at this year’s Hong Kong International Art Fair, SeoulPhoto and South Korea’s Daegu Photo Biennale.