Born in Kawasaki, Japan, in 1978, Arai lives and works in Wuppertal, Germany. His practice explores the intersections of photography, memory, and history, focusing on the daguerreotype—one of the earliest photographic techniques—which he mastered through self-directed experimentation. Arai treats these works as "micro-monuments," image-objects that convey the sensation of engaging with events and subjects across time and space.
Since encountering the Daigo Fukuryū Maru in 2010, Arai has engaged deeply with Japan's nuclear history, creating works that address Fukushima, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and nuclear test sites in the United States and the Marshall Islands. His interdisciplinary activities span filmmaking, writing, and collaborative research.
Arai's honors include the Source Code Prize (UK, 2014), the 41st Kimura Ihei Photography Award (2016), and the Grand Prize at the 72nd Salerno International Film Festival (2018). His works are held in major collections, including the Smithsonian Institution, MFA Boston, SFMOMA, MOMAT, and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.
Full CV [PDF]
Half Mirror is a series I composed of the snapshots taken between 2003 and 2006 for my solo exhibition held at Gallery Space Rondish, then located in Semba, Osaka, in 2006. I remember being at a loss — sitting with Hitomi Kintani, the gallery director, discussing the random images I gathered, with no idea how to select or arrange them. I had just graduated from a night photography college, indifferent to the themes I should pursue, to any critical relationship with the communities I belonged to, to the voice my own body and mind were sending out. Yet I was lured by the mysterious gaze of others, to the surfaces of reflecting objects, and to nature, all of which looked back when looked at.
"In a forest, I have felt many times over that it was not I who looked at the forest. Some days I felt that the trees were looking at me, were speaking to me…. I was there, listening…. I think that the painter must be penetrated by the universe and not want to penetrate it…. I expect to be inwardly submerged, buried."
(André Marchand, quoted in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind, trans. Carleton Dallery, in The Primacy of Perception, ed. James Edie, Northwestern University Press, 1964)
The strong resonance I feel with these words has never diminished in the least, even now, more than a quarter century after I first began to photograph. The infinite complexity of the world as it appears to the eye — how could one ever claim to have truly seen it? The camera is a probe through which the world penetrates me, reversing and being reversed between the one who sees and the one who is seen; a half-mirror that reflects my figure in translucence.
(June 2026)