In Mako Miyamoto’s evocative series, “The Spectral Divide”, the mysteries of the unseen world spring vividly to life. An exploration rooted in the concept of infrared light, this series delves into the realms that lie just beyond our visual grasp, highlighting how these concealed wavelengths redefine our perception of reality. With a camera modified to unveil the clandestine splendor of infrared light, Miyamoto transports viewers to a realm where hidden specters weave through familiar landscapes. These spectral figures, enveloped in this invisible radiation, gesture towards a forgotten continuum that hums beneath the surface of the visible world. Against the backdrop of the Pacific Northwest, an area steeped in natural beauty and mystery, the series documents these ghostly entities in an environment where the tangible and the intangible delicately intertwine, inviting us to ponder the land beyond our sensory boundaries.
The masterful interplay of infrared waves in Miyamoto’s work not only highlights the invisible but also challenges our understanding of perception and existence. Infrared light, with its longer wavelengths, not only reveals hidden defects in objects but also metaphorically peels away the layers of reality to expose an empire of lost senses. Through Miyamoto’s lens, the ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary, provoking a contemplation of the boundaries that define our world and the unseen energies that animate it. Each photograph narrates a story of lost borders and spectral histories, painting a tapestry of wonderment and curiosity in a world that exists just beyond the thresholds of human sight. In doing so, “The Spectral Divide” ignites a sense of awe and invites discourse on the intangible forces that pervade our environment, shimmering just below the surface of the known.
Inspired by the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum which exists beyond the visible spectrum of light discernible by the human eye, the works in the show speculate on the unseen world just outside of perception. The Spectral Divide explores the spaces that surround us but lie outside of our awareness, brushing past us like waves in the dark, a ghost caught in the frame between light and shadow. The infrared world exists at wavelengths that are longer than those of visible light, just beyond deep red in the light spectrum. What we consider color and light are in fact visible radiation; increasing in temperature from violet, the coolest, to deep red, the warmest. Infrared radiation is warmer still; the body can feel and react to it, but is unable to perceive it with the human eye. This radiation has the ability to penetrate the skin and reveal abnormalities, things that shift, change, or grow unseen within a body or environment. The work in this exhibition explores the spectral bodies that may exist beyond our knowing, an empire of lost senses wandering just below the skin of this world, bathed in a sea of infrared radiation. Captured over the last 10 months, The Spectral Divide documents this territory in and around the Pacific Northwest, shot exclusively on a camera modified to capture the infrared spectrum of light and provide a glimpse into the unseen world that surrounds us. Spectral figures haunt familiar yet unfamiliar landscapes, building their own collective history in a country of lost borders, wandering through the fabric of the invisible light.
Mako Miyamoto
More info: Behance, Instagram, Tumblr.
