Sohei Nishino, Assembled, 2026

“Who am I? I have faced this question through the creation of a physical map. However, one day, I felt a sudden urge to delve into my own memories. I retrieved a vast collection of film I had captured for a project titled ‘Diorama Map,’ which I have been working on since 2003. Over nearly two years, my assistant and I developed each frame and brought it to life, one by one, in the darkroom.”

In “Assembled” Sohei Nishino traverses the world, once more, through photographs he once took in Shanghai, New York, Paris, Hong Kong, London, Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, Bern, New Delhi, Jerusalem, Amsterdam, Havana, Johannesburg, San Francisco, Dundee, Venice, and several cities across Japan. But Nishino is not a traveler, and his photos are neither souvenirs nor snapshots by an “outsider”. Rather, his photos seem so natural, intimate and unladen by prior notions that it is at times difficult to place them geographically. Working mostly in black and white, with occasional shots in (muted) colors, Nishino continues to stay interested in his surroundings throughout the almost 300 pages of the book.

“Whilst walking, the people I encountered during my journey, the sights that passed by me, the unique foods only found there, the sounds that rose from each place, the air I breathed in; within these recollections, there is no hierarchy. All are equal, and the continuous weave of movement and crossing has made me who I am now.”
― from Sohei Nishino’s afterword