09/15/2021
He posts something new everyday. ❤️
This year marks the tenth anniversary of Tatsuya Tanaka’s “Miniature Calendar,” an ongoing photography project that has earned the artist significant acclaim, millions of online fans, and exhibitions across Japan. Every day, Tanaka posts a new photograph that combines otherwise unremarkable objects with creatively-positioned miniature figurines. One such work, entitled “Shinpansen”, repurposes a loaf and slice of bread to depict passengers boarding a Japanese bullet train; in “Soft Snow”, the artist transforms a slice of strawberry shortcake into a ski slope; and in another photograph, a banana peel becomes a hammock for a napping miniature figure. During the pandemic, Tanaka’s photographs have featured COVID-inspired tableaus, including a surgical mask transformed into a volleyball net for miniature athletes and a thermometer reimagined as a tiny race car. "We are spending more time at our homes,” Tanaka told Matcha - Japan Travel Web Magazine last year. “This may be an opportunity to take a good look around you; a little change of view, and you might recognize that the world is filled with interesting things.” Tanaka was born in Kumamoto and studied art in college. He then worked as a design firm art director, specializing in magazine advertisements. He began collecting and creating plastic model figures as a hobby. His whimsical miniaturized scenes have become immensely popular online. Since launching the project in 2011, he has gained close to three million Instagram followers; examples of his work are currently on display at the Mizuno Museum in Nagano and the Oita Art Museum, and have been featured recently in articles from designboom, Colossal and My Modern Met.