Silver in Analog/Fine Art / 2026 / Analog / Fine Art

• Prize
  Silver in Analog/Fine Art
• Photographer
  Chie Hirabayashi, Japan
• Date of Photograph
  03.2026

We accept the world before us as reality, but do we truly see it? Reality may simply be an image born of perception. Through photography, collage, and drawing, I explore how reality is constructed rather than recorded. Yellow paint acts as a trace of perception, gradually blurring the boundary between the visible world and our recognition of it. Developing gelatin silver prints in the darkroom becomes a way of retracing my relationship with the subject and reaffirming my presence. Rather than denying photography, this work embraces it as a record of our fragile attempt to understand existence.

Chie Hirabayashi (b. 1985, Fukuoka, Japan) is a Japanese photographer working primarily with black-and-white gelatin silver prints and collage. Her work explores perception, recognition, and the fundamental nature of reality. In recent years, she has expanded her practice to include collage and mixed media, investigating the tension between opposing forces such as dreams and reality, the individual and the collective, contraction and expansion, and freedom and restraint. She has exhibited in Japan and internationally.