Sarai Ohira Photography Exhibition “KAMUROGI x KAMUROMI”

Sarai Ohira, a Fukuoka-based photographer, wishes for the resuscitation of our planet, pursuing harmony on the earth where human beings shall live peacefully surrounded by beautiful nature.

She has a career of twenty years of garden designing, where photography is an essential part of her profession. While focusing on temples and shrines deep in the forests, Ohira often perceives the existence of Kamurogi and Kamuromi, honorific titles of the primordial god and the goddess in Japanese mythology. From these experiences she came to know that we individuals, as the guardians of the earth, should, in preparation for this role, get balanced by the principles of Yin and Yang, so to speak: light and shade, fire and water, body and mind, and so on. She discovered that when one enjoys photographs that are symmetrically harmonized, the water of every single cell of one’s body gets activated so as to take on the Yin-Yang balance. Thus she found a new possibility for photography, and she names her theory and technique KAMUROGI x KAMUROMI.

Ohira explains, “Even a familiar landscape in everyday life, you can feel it anew once a viewpoint or an angle has been changed. When a symmetrical image touches your heart, the water of your cells is energized in your whole body, from which the waves of harmony will spread out to the atmosphere and wrap up over the planet. 70% of your body is water, so is of the surface of the earth; through the water of both, your wishes can cause resonance with the energy of the earth.”

Since 2015, Ohira has exhibited a series of KAMUROGI x KAMUROMI in Taiwan, Cologne, Tokyo, Osaka, and Fukuoka. She is fully prepared for the first solo exhibition in New York. “Also here I would like to share the Yin-Yang balance with the viewer,” continues Ohira, “to keep photographing until the earth becomes beautifully harmonized.”

Sarai Ohira
Born in Kagawa in 1961, Sarai Ohira studied interior design at Machida Hiroko Interior Coordinator Academy, Fukuoka, and earned a diploma in 1995. After studying garden designing and city planning at University of Washington, Seattle, and conducting extensive fieldwork, she was urged by the Machida Academy to establish a garden planning course and to teach interior design, where she served for five years. From 1997, and from 2000 when she opened the store “bio garden,” Ohira has been both a garden designer, and also the vice president of KOYOH CO., LTD., which carries eco-biological products for improving water quality.

Solo Exhibitions
2016   KAMUROGI x KAMUROMI, Kyushu Geibun Kan Museum, Fukuoka
2016   KAMUROGI x KAMUROMI, OLYMPUS Gallery Osaka, Osaka
2015   KAMUROGI x KAMUROMI, OLYMPUS Gallery Tokyo, Tokyo
2015   KAMUROGI x KAMUROMI, Tenri Japanisch-Deutsche Kulturwerkstatt, Cologne
2011   The Beauty & Hope of Japan, The Sherwood Taipei, Taipei

Group Exhibitions
2016   KOKU (time), Tenri Japanisch-Deutsche Kulturwerkstatt, Cologne
2015   The 3rd Taiwan Japan International Photography Exhibition, Taichung City Seaport Art Center, Taichung
2014   The 2nd Taiwan Japan International Photography Exhibition, Taichung City Govt. Yangming Bldg, Taichung
2013   The 1st Taiwan Japan International Photography Exhibition, Moment Café Gallery, Taichung
2011   BLACK, Association Culturelle Franco-Japonaise de TENRI, Paris
Photography of Prayer, Ryukoku University Symphony Metropolitan Hall Alumni Hall, Kyoto
Photography of Prayer, Meguro Persimmon Hall, Tokyo