over the years, we’ve seen japanese artist haruhiko kawaguchi — who goes by the moniker photographer hal — vacuum-seal couples in a variety of intimate spaces. the unconventional portraiture see pairs of people tightly wrapped in a thin layer of plastic, and photographed in an extreme, controlled, and ephemeral moment. now, photographer hal is scaling up his ambitious work for his latest series, ‘flesh love all’, where families and couples are vacuum-sealed together with the homes they occupy. ‘I started a project to vacuum pack a couple and everything around with a landscape,’ the artist says. ‘not only a couple who loves each other, but also everything around them is vacuum-packed, and eventually the whole landscape is vacuum-packed, creating an image where everything in the world is one existence.’

photographer hal vacuum-seals families together with their homes
matsushima family 

 

 

photographer hal’s carefully-controlled portraits allow him a strict shooting time of 10 seconds, before the situation could become harmful. the couples volunteer themselves and their homes to the project, seeking to convey the message behind the artist’s vision and photographic philosophy — love. ‘the shooting location is the most important place for them,’ the artist continues. ‘the things you love will be one, and the world will be one. I think that is an ideal form of love…we should spread the sense of love outward, and spread the link of love more and more across various communities.’

photographer hal
yamada family 

photographer hal
inafuku family 

photographer hal
okamoto family

photographer hal
yakabe family 

 

 

project info: 

 

artist: photographer hal

series: flesh love all