Sohei Nishino is one of the rising stars of contemporary Japanese photography. Discovered in 2008 by Michael Hoppen, 28 year old Nishino’s extraordinary photographic dioramas, monumental in size, map out the artist’s personal impressions of the world’s major cities in several thousand intimate details.

Never before exhibited outside of Asia, Michael Hoppen Contemporary will present the Diorama Map series for his inaugural European show, featuring twelve of the artist's most striking works. Nishino’s collages are not precise geographic recreations, but an imperfect mix of landmarks and iconic features conceived from his personal ‘re-experiencing’ of a city.

Inspired by Japanese cartography and gifted with an impressive power of observation, his extraordinary maps are a result of a long journey through many cities: Osaka, his hometown, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Tokyo, Hong Kong as well as Shanghai, New York, Paris, London and his last creation Istanbul.

When photographing a city, Nishino walks the entire city on foot for a month, capturing streets and buildings from every possible angle, often using over 300 rolls of black and white film and taking over 10,000 pictures. In a lengthy and painstaking process, all made by hand, Nishino creates a photographic map through which the city reveals itself. Nishino’s re-imagination of a city presents a convincing record despite its geographical inaccuracies, a map embodying the intricacies of a city through the eyes and recollection of an outsider.