The eerily haunting photographs of Chie Hirabayashi reflect the artist’s cultural background, love of literature, and life experiences. They appear like something out of a fevered dream, an “imbalanced collage of high-contrast hallucination and vague reality.” Using long time exposures and multiple exposures in post-processing, Hirabayashi presents a vision of a ghostly, ruptured world, surreally beautiful and infused with a sense of tranquil intensity. Hirabayashi is especially influenced by the work of two famous Japanese writers, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Kōbō Abe, and considers her photographs a form of visual poetry. Hirabayashi currently lives in Japan.