Pool, by Japanese photographer Taro Hirano, offers a distinctive view of one of the most recognisable spaces in everyday life: swimming pools. Rather than focusing on their recreational or sporting function, Hirano finds in them a setting where architecture, colour and geometry assume an unexpected prominence. His photographs transform these familiar spaces into compositions of unusual beauty, poised between documentary observation and visual abstraction.
The pools appear as artificial structures in which every element seems to follow a precise order. The lines defining the basins, the metal ladders, the tiles, the concrete surfaces and the different shades of the water form a repertoire of shapes that Hirano observes with almost obsessive attention. The absence or scarcity of human figures reinforces this sense of stillness, as though these places had been temporarily suspended, waiting to resume an activity that remains outside the frame.
What makes these images particularly interesting, however, is the way the photographer draws an unexpected dimension from seemingly ordinary spaces. Colours, proportions and small architectural details reveal an aesthetic that usually goes unnoticed. There is something melancholic about these silent pools, but also a subtle sense of humour and a fascination with the forms produced by functional architecture.
The story of Pool is closely linked to skateboard culture and the landscape of the American West Coast. Hirano, himself a skateboarder, became interested in abandoned private pools that, once empty, became improvised skating spaces. Their curves and rounded walls offered an alternative to conventional facilities, while graffiti, wheel marks and the gradual deterioration of the structures bore witness to a culture developed outside official spaces.
Originally published in 2005 by Japanese publisher Little More, Pool became one of Hirano's most representative works and the starting point for his distinctive photographic exploration of the United States. The revised and expanded edition, independently published in 2020 through No.12 Gallery, brings back the original images and incorporates Foreclosure, a later project devoted to young skateboarders who enter vacant homes to use their pools.
This expansion introduces a more explicit social reading. The empty pools cease to be merely settings for skateboard culture and also become traces of a particular idea of American prosperity. The abandoned homes, their deteriorating facilities and the skateboarders' appropriation of these spaces create a contrast between the Californian residential dream and a reality marked by abandonment and the transformation of the suburban landscape.
Pool Expanded Edition thus brings together two complementary dimensions: the visual appeal of architecture designed for leisure and the testimony of a subculture that has found in it a territory of freedom. A particularly interesting photobook for its ability to connect photography, architecture, urban culture and a vision of the United States in which fascination and decay coexist.
