A journey across Shikoku

In March 2024, I cycled the Shikoku Henro with my brother.

The Henro is one of the oldest pilgrimage routes in the world. It traces a circular path across the Japanese island of Shikoku, connecting 88 Buddhist temples across more than 1,200 kilometres of mountains, forests, and coastal roads. Its origins reach back to the 9th century and the Buddhist priest Kūkai, who walked this terrain in pursuit of enlightenment. For centuries, pilgrims in white robes have followed the same circuit: four prefectures, four spiritual stages. Tokushima: awakening. Kochi: ascetic training. Ehime: enlightenment. Kagawa: nirvana.

We did not walk. We cycled. Not to move faster, but to find a different relationship to distance and time. The route demanded something from us every day. It asked for presence.

What I was looking for

There was no plan before we left. No shot list, no locations researched. I did not go to Japan to make photographs. I went to move through a landscape that has been walked, and now cycled, for over a thousand years.

What I was looking for was space. Time to observe. The kind of attention that only comes when you remove the noise.

The camera was with me. But the project did not begin with the camera.

What came back

What returned from Shikoku were fragments.

Not a travelogue. Not documentation. Images that carry the quality of memory rather than fact. There is no caption that would add anything to them. They are not pictures of temples or landscapes. They are traces of an experience that resists full translation into language.

That resistance is what the project is built from.

For two years after the journey, I worked on how to present these images. The paper, the printing process, the book, the exhibition space. Every decision was made in service of that same quality: stillness, depth, presence.

The Work

All works within HENRO are produced using piezography, a fine art inkjet printing process that achieves exceptional tonal depth and archival permanence. Each print is made by hand in a limited edition of 7, on Japanese papers: Haini Kozo (39.5 g/m²) and Awagami. These papers, refined over centuries in Japan, carry their own texture and warmth. They are not neutral surfaces. They become part of the image.

Prints are available in three formats: 90 × 120 cm, 60 × 80 cm, and 21 × 30 cm.

Alongside the individual works, a limited Collectors Box is available: a curated selection of 10 prints, personally composed for each collector. No two boxes are the same.