Offline

Offline, from Casper Kent, Kawako Press and Friend Editions

A collection of polaroids spanning the past 10 years.


As the turn of the millennium approached, the birth of the internet felt like the last exciting unexplored tundra remaining after the physical world had been drained of mystery, discovery and curiosity.

And it was fucking great, for a while.

Several decades later, that vast digital expanse has been over-developed and commodified into a sterile wasteland, reducing all of us to artificial living, simulated socialising and surviving on synthetic experiences.

The online and outside worlds both leading the obliteration of connection and intimacy, the erosion of eroticism and the death of dreaming.

We once went online to escape the banality of reality, we romanticized the future of technology, now we crave the touch of life more than ever.

I once thought I was searching for the ethereal and fantasy but soon discovered that the core of both is tethered to the human desire for connection, meaning and intimacy – to feel alive.

It is a beautiful paradox to chase fantasy and authentic experiences simultaneously, the conundrum of human desire.

Many of these photographs are taken inside of windowless love hotels and secluded ryokans, for a short time existing in solitude and isolation behind four walls, free of distractions; both the relentless pull of the online and the inescapable dullness of the outside world.

It is in this environment and these moments that memories are birthed.

Is a polaroid not the perfect visual medium on which to paint a memory? Free of lucidity - soft, imperfect and abstract. Created in the moment, born in a way which doesn’t impose on the moment itself, slowly forming over time from a hazy mist into something treasured - gently fading with the passage of time, inviting the mind to fill in the cracks with nostalgia and sentiment.

- Casper Kent