Landscape photographer Toshio Shibata―a chiaroscuro painter with a lens―creates geological mappings, civil engineering records and a narrative of the Japanese landscape in transition. His work is filled with abstract geometric patterns, anthropomorphic rock formations, and man-made waterfalls. These are all part of his chronicles of regional development and landscape architecture. People are almost always absent from his images and when present, they serve only to emphasize scale, social anomie and the paradoxical temporary emptiness of the landscape of this overcrowded country.

Shibata uses black-and-white Polaroid Type 55 film to produce an ongoing series of elegant, accomplished images based on the geographic elements the altered landscape offers. The film provides a large format 4x5-inch negative that supplies the sharp detail he requires in his images.

The sculptural effects of dams made of cement or sandbags, water falling over manufactured precipices or channeled between cement steps, highways partially carved out of stone, excavations shored up by grids with various geometric patterns are all present in his images made with Type 55 film. With this film, Shibata is also able to produce a wide range of shades of

gray resulting in moody narrative pieces, some of which have the impact of movie stills just before the scene "fades to black." Works like Untitled Polaroid #004 and Untitled Polaroid #009