One's Own Arena is the final moment in Cortes´ sense of place Trilogy, after Things Here and Things Still to Come (2011) and Costa (2013). This time his territory is Toyama, Japan.
As the title alludes, Cortes creates an arena of visual relationships, portraying men and women in their own circle of confidence and the city’s dark alleys, bars, plants and objects. All is mixed among sequences of intimate images of women in his hotel room, working as studies of the body, a trademark of his work.
Key to the exploration are the surfaces, the superficiality of things, as photography is, by nature, superficial. Skin, texture, light and shadow and even film itself is revealed as the essence of what is to be known.
This is Cortes 4th book with Pierre von Kleist editions after Silence, Things Here and Things Still to Come (featured in Photobook: A History vol.III) and Costa.