SEEEU 2025, the European Photography Month in Tokyo, is currently underway, featuring compelling works by European photographers displayed across the Japanese capital. The exhibition showcases diverse photographic projects ranging from AI-generated family memories to critical examinations of historical symbolism, with displays appearing in public venues from cafes to construction sites throughout Tokyo.
The exhibition features several groundbreaking works that explore themes of memory, identity, and technological innovation. Maria Mavropoulou's "Imagined Images" from 2023 presents a unique approach to family history through AI-generated photography. Using stories from her great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents as prompts for image-generating artificial intelligence, Mavropoulou has created a fictional family photo album that visualizes lost memories and moments that might have been. "I took all the stories of my great grandparents, grandparents and parents, and used them as prompts in an image-generating AI to rewrite my own history," she explains. "Unexpectedly, it was not only emotional but also informative. The AI seemed to know more than I did, adding details I wasn't aware of."
Several artists in the exhibition address themes of displacement, war, and cultural identity through their photographic work. Varvara Uhlik's "Sunshine, How Are You?" from 2023-2024 draws from her personal experience as someone born in eastern Ukraine five years after the Soviet Union's collapse. Her work captures moments of childhood joy amid the echoes of Soviet values, with the artist aiming to reclaim Ukrainian identity from the shadow of Russian colonialism. Similarly, Marylise Vigneau's "FRONTLINES OF DIGNITY, SHREDDED SKIES AND OTHER LOVE STORIES" from 2025 explores the full-scale invasion of Ukraine through personal stories, including one powerful image where "the sun shone and the city breathed in the gentleness of spring. Families filled the parks and, for a moment, the war felt distant. But by late afternoon, a Russian missile had struck Kryvyi Rih, 400km away, killing 14 people including six children."
The exhibition also includes works that challenge perceptions of nature, surveillance, and historical memory. Laure Winants' "Time Capsule" series, created during a four-month Arctic expedition in Svalbard, Norway, probes the limits of human perception and demonstrates how Earth's rhythms unfold on scales beyond everyday understanding. Tadao Cern's "Comfort Zone" from 2013 presents aerial shots of European beaches taken without subjects' awareness, revealing how people retreat into personal rituals even in public spaces and suggesting that privacy is self-generated and illusory in an age of surveillance and digital voyeurism.
Several artists explore childhood memories and symbolic imagery through their photographic practices. Igor Schiller's "Familiar Characters, Bunnies" from 2020-2023 draws on his Balkan upbringing, following an adult's return to forgotten corners of childhood and blending memory and dream to recapture lost magic. Anna Tihanyi's "Budapest A-Z, Bubble" from 2022 reimagines Budapest through childhood recollections and symbolic imagery, reflecting a drastically changing Europe by creating a visual alphabet inspired by a Hungarian children's encyclopedia.
The exhibition addresses contemporary issues including environmental concerns and copyright in the digital age. Francisco Gonzalez Camacho's "Reverting, Oasis" from 2024 reflects on the commodification of nature in Iceland, examining issues such as gentrification, waste, and environmental degradation. Tamara Janes' "Copyright Swap 2" from 2023 explores copyright boundaries in photography by digitally altering scans from the New York Public Library's picture collection, with each modification assessed through a traffic-light system developed with a copyright lawyer to determine what changes were needed to reach the "green zone" of legal transformation.
Among the most provocative works in the exhibition is Christina Werner's "The Horses Are Coming" from 2024, which addresses nationalism, identity politics, and representation by examining how the Nazis used animals symbolically. Werner's series investigates how eagles, lions, horses, and sheepdogs were deployed in the Third Reich as emblems of strength, purity, and order, arguing that these symbolic codes continue to resonate in contemporary society.
The SEEEU 2025 exhibition continues at venues across Tokyo until November 23, offering visitors an opportunity to engage with diverse European perspectives on memory, technology, history, and contemporary social issues through the medium of photography. The public display format, spanning from traditional gallery spaces to unconventional locations like construction sites, reflects the exhibition's commitment to making European photographic art accessible to Tokyo's diverse population.
