Zoren Gold and Minori

Zoren Gold and Minori.

We simply started working together because of our mutual curiosity in mixing each of our different skills. We hoped, together, to invent a new aesthetic in photographic imagery. Our desire to see unborn and unseen imagery has lead us to experiment with combining photography with other mediums such as drawings, collage, hand-made props and computer graphics—the fusion here is one of photography and illustration, digital and analog. Such manipulation of images made us more optimistic about modern-day photography in that it is no longer only about capturing a moment of physical reality.

Our approach to the photography of images is to always leave room for creativity and for the subjects to remain in a real or unreal environment. By playing with the images and improvising with materials, we keep up the spontaneity, which plays a key role in unlocking our fantasy. The image itself triggers our sense of freedom and allows us to see it from all different angles, as well as to combat our prejudices against any limited or fixed ideas of reality.

Visuals communicate with us, while awake, similarly to the way in which they do when we dream. Dreams communicate with us beyond any possible verbal communication. They are beyond logic and often unexplainable within our physical reality—we can’t recall the dream when we wake up. But, the feeling and the experience during the dream is quite real and makes perfect sense within us.

When we are re-shaping and reinventing images, it blurs the boundary of real and the unreal. The image no longer belongs to either of us and it becomes detached and independent, confronting us with unfamiliar feelings and territories, which exist only within ourselves. It’s a combination of paradoxes, known and unknown, which surround us all the time.