Portrait of Fruit: As A Fruit Farmer

• Prize
  Gold in Portfolio/Food, 2nd Place winner in Portfolio
• Photographer
  Masumi Shiohara

I am a fruit farmer. This is a portrait of fruit. I make photographic works of the fruits I grow. I believe that growing crops is the same as raising your own children. In my case, it is fruit. In the shadow of the fruit that is being harvested, there are many thinned branches, flowers, and young fruit. In these works, the fruits that have reached adulthood are represented as if they were human figures.

Masumi Shiohara was born in 1974 in Nagano, Japan. He worked at a micro-machining company as a development engineer. After leaving the company, he took over the management of the family orchard from his parents and is now running a farm. While growing fruit here he became interested in capturing them into works of photographic art, a skill which he picked up by himself. The inspiration to capture these photographically originally came when he was requested to supply fruit on a branch to a botanical artist