14 DAY TRIAL // Japanese photographer Haruhiko Kawaguchi, whose artistic name is Photographer Hal, made headlines with an unusual project called “Flesh Love,” in which he puts people in plastic wrap, sucks out the air and takes photos of their distorted bodies.
Hal says the project gives the couples a chance to be so closely sealed with each other, as if they are one single body. In his studio in Tokyo, the artist spends only 10-20 seconds photographing couples that he meets in nightclubs, as longer than this might risk his models’ lives.
“My work explores the idea of love. I like to vacuum pack my subjects because it’s indicative of freshness and preservation, but it also represents the closeness and fullness of love and its magnetic power to bring people together,” Hal says, as cited by BuzzFeed.
Over 80 couples participated in this project, and Kawaguchi says the men panic about not being able to breathe more often than the women, who just want to look good. He also adds that his project's popularity has worked to his advantage, as now it's easier to persuade people to come along for a photo shoot.
The result of his work, those photos of people huddled together in weird positions, is really bizarre if you ask me, but Kawaguchi says it's his way of showing and preserving the love between two people.
I have to admit that I feel I can't breathe when I look at the pictures (more of which you can find on his website), and regardless of the artistic intention, I still think vacuum-sealing human beings in plastic is weird.