His Own Antlers

• Prize
  Silver in Fine Art/Portraiture
• Photographer
  Hiroko Murayama, Japan
• Date of Photograph
  2025-
• Website
  https://murayamahiroko.com
• Instagram
  https://www.instagram.com/_hiiiroko/

My eight-year-old son found a deer antler in the forest by chance. Each year, a stag sheds its antlers and continues living. Something seems to remain there quietly. My son was strongly drawn to the antler. He touched it again and again, kept it near, and returned to the forest as if following something he could not let go of. I still do not know how to put into words what it meant for him. And yet, between body and landscape, object and presence, I began to sense something quietly appearing, something that does not yet have a name. This work stays with that uncertainty.

Hiroko Murayama is a photographer exploring the contours that emerge through relationships with others, landscape, and memory. Starting from intimate family relationships, her practice investigates the shifting boundaries between self and other, body and landscape, perception and memory. Her major works include The Linden Garden (2016) and A Quiet Erosion. Since 2025, she has been developing His Own Antlers, a series centered on her relationship with her son following his discovery of deer antlers in the forest.

Awards 2026
Athena Photography Festival Shortlist
《His Own Antlers》
2026
AAP Magazine #57 Portrait
Next Round Selection
《His Own Antlers》
2025
AAP Magazine #55 Women
Next Round Selection
《His Own Antlers》
2022
Tokyo International Foto Awards (TIFA)
Honorable Mention
《A Quiet Erosion》
2016
Solo Exhibition, Aidem Photo Gallery “Sirius,” Tokyo
《The Linden Garden》
2016
Selected for Procyon Photo F’s
2014
Published My Sewing Box
(Mainavi Publishing)