Since 2011 Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber have been exploring various phenomena of the Japanese present under the title Japanese Lesson, dealing with subcultures, activism and protest or the political landscape of the major cities of Tokyo and Osaka. In 2019 they developed several walks in districts on the one hand still struggeling with stigmatization and discrimination, or on the other hand experiencing changes due to the Olympic Games.
Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber’s photographic work is image production in an understated mode. No photographs of decisive moments; not even any that search their surroundings for major events or specifically original motifs. Rather, it is casual photography: serene, attentive, more at a walking pace than that of lightning speed; a photography of process, oriented as much to time as to space. […]
The sequencing of these ‘Walks’ correspond to the natural process that is characteristic of the photographic work by Stuke and Sieber as a whole. After the picture is before the picture; one photo does not stand for itself, but is part of a sequence and constellation; what is captured in one photograph will look somewhat different in the next; and completing a series with a particular photo does not necessarily mean that it has been finalised. As a general rule, the work of these two photographers almost always shifts the photographic work beyond the moment and the motif towards a movement that is conceived as open and that only comes to a temporary standstill with the last image of the photographic ensemble. […] Stefanie Diekmann