Floaters, by Mayumi Hosokura, made in 2012 during a Taipei Kuandu Museum residency and further developed in 2013, examines youth, the body, and tropical environments. The project explores how photographs blur boundaries between bodies and minerals, human and nonhuman matter, and the image and the print’s surface. Following—but distinct from—the 1990s onna no ko shashin movement (often translated as “girls’ photography,” a women-led diaristic snapshot trend in Japan), Hosokura treats identity as flexible and negotiated. At the same time, she tests what a print can hold when the support itself changes through the process.
Visually, the series shows nudes, androgynous figures, inorganic matter, and fragments of tropical vegetation, shot in tight frames and minimal setups. Color is restrained but deliberate; recurring blues allude to the cyanotype tradition. Lighting tends toward soft contrast that keeps skin, mineral, and plant textures legible, producing an ambiguous, suspended mood. Surfaces show veils, streaks, and abrasions that sit on top of depicted bodies, folding the act of looking back onto the print’s skin.
Technically speaking, Floaters is shaped by a hybrid pathway: color negatives are output as tintypes on handmade plates, those tintypes are scanned, and the final works are produced as type‑C prints. Hosokura embraces the analogue residues—air bubbles, drips, scratches, and frayed edges—treating them as temporal marks. The iterative transfer across media tracks an "increase and decrease of information," allowing the picture to appear as if floating between materiality and visuality.
The project was shown in a 2013 solo exhibition at G/P Gallery in Tokyo. The photobook Floaters (Waterfall Ltd., Taipei, 2014)—featuring a short story by Shuxia Yen—extended the project’s cross‑cultural exchange and circulated in a limited edition of 500 copies.
