In his project Looking Through The Window, Kenji Chiga raises fundamental questions of what it means to experience the world visually—how we are looking and being watched through technology. Stranded in his home, Kenji used live camera footage of a large intersection in Shibuya, Tokyo to portray people during the corona crisis. As the title describes, the window is a frame through which we can experience the world, but, in this case, the window is not an actual window. Rather, it is a frame that filters our perception of reality. It is the computer screen through which Kenji captured the images, and it is the video camera, without objective, through which Kenji was forced to see. Kenji tells:

“It showed a view of the world today that I couldn't see from my window at home…a lot of people still come and go today on screens that lack a sense of reality. But this is reality.”

The pictures that were captured look anything but real. The sense you get is something simulated and virtual. The people look like stand-ins, generic and unrecognizable. But, as Kenji states, it is still reality—as real as the virus that is represented by the mask-covered faces.

The project challenges you to see how far you can remove yourself from reality and still feel it. Can we connect and empathize with these unknowing people who are just going about in their daily lives? Can humanity sip through the layers of digital technology and give us new understanding?

By portraying these people, as unposed and normal as they are, the project insists that empathy and humanness can not disappear, even though viruses, screens, and cameras remove us from each other. It is, in fact, this dystopian and technological aesthetic of the images that makes us want to get out of our quarantine and see and be seen by an unfiltered reality.

Kenji Chiga was born in 1982 in Shiga Prefecture, Japan. Currently, he works as a freelance photographer to look at social issues in the world around him.

He was awarded the 16th Photography 1_WALL Grand Prix and the Best Emerging Photographer Award at the 8th Dali International Photography Exhibition.

See more on Kenji’s website and Instagram.