“Kachō Fūgetsu”: A poetic transience of stillness and delicacy in Paul Cupido’s photography
By Zhilin Xiang (Esther)
In his second solo exhibition, Paul Cupido chose a Japanese idiom to title the exhibition–花鳥風月, literally “flower, bird, wind, moon”. Capturing most of his subjects in photography, “Flower, bird, wind, moon” all symbolizes a certain transient and fleeting moment of nature. Walking through the exhibition, the flowing dynamic between natural elements makes the theme of the exhibition loud and clear. From nature to old philosophy, Paul Cupido channeled the origin of human nature and emotions to nature itself.
The contemplation of nature’s beauty, infused with Japanese visual language, Cupido turns the fleeting beauty of nature to something eternal. According to the exhibition overview, his stay in Japan and the Japanese woodblock prints inspire the photos. The textures, color consists of a poetic dream for people who can truly walk into. The images consist of the story and changes of nature: blossoms dissolve into the sky, or bathing the human subject like it’s in a surreal dream.
The sequence of the image, depicts the subtropical islands of Okinawa, arc from morning to dust, the emotional mobility keeps flowing while the viewers walk around the space. Cupido’s approach embraces the Japanese appreciation of imperfection and the beauty of fleeting moments. Combining his Dutch heritage and the Japanese visual traditions, Cupido uses nature as his rhythm making his photographs poetic and surreal. He balances cultural reference with personal vision, to make this a palette full of natural elements- petals, cloud, river, and wave. A literary translation between feelings and perception has achieved a delicate balance, even the human figures in his photo appear to be transient.
In his photo, “flower bath”, 2025, Cupido depicts a human figure as a sign of passage, letting all the petals pass through the human body, like a vessel carrying the flowing petals. It addresses the essence of the photography that feeling as a form and perception conveys a transient state of dreaming, and meditative state of mind. Using handmade kozo paper, viewers can see the photo up-close about the textures and details. Aligning with photos next to each other with very little wall text, every one of the photos feels like a gentle humming next to one another, like a gentle harmony when reading the poetry. The human subject lies down with joy and pleasure, enjoying what the fleeting moment has brought to them, and turning it to an eternal beauty.
The tone and texture in Cupido’s photos are delicate and constrained. The textures of the kozo paper are made delicately by hand and presented to the viewers with a gentle and delicate visual touch, like inhale and breath. Cupido’s world of harmony and peace has presented as a uniformity of gentleness that whispers into our ears while we see through all the photos in the gallery.
Paul Cupido’s exhibition “Kachō Fūgetsu” is being held in The Photographer’s Gallery in London through Sep. 12 –Nov. 16 2025.
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About the Author
Zhilin is a writer and a lens-based visual artist based in Brooklyn and London. Their work explores themes of diaspora, identity, and collective memory, focusing on how collective memory impacts on individual identity.