Mount Fuji, 2023
"I aim to engage with the world with wide-open senses. My work is about the magic moments of life as well as its inconveniences. I want to take pictures while forgetting about the process of photography, until I'm saturated with an existential sense of life. Every step I take begins with the notion of mono no aware: the transience of everything, the gentle melancholy of things, being sensitive to ephemera."
Paul Cupido
Paul Cupido's (*1972, NL) affinity for the natural world was born out of a childhood spent on the Dutch island of Terschelling, where the ebb and flow of tides and the cycles of the moon reflect the fleetingness of life. Cupido's work is furthermore inspired by Japanese photography as well as his travels there. Japanese philosophical principles, and especially that of Mu, permeate his creative practice. Mu could be loosely translated as does not have or a void, albeit one that holds potential.