Photograher and ACC grantee Koichiro Kurita has been inspired by the writings of Henry David Thoreau, and his dream to increase the relationship between nature and humans, and by Henry Fox Talbot, a British scientist, inventor and photography pioneer who invented the salted paper and calotype processes, precursors to photographic processes of the later 19th and 20th centuries. Born in 1943, at age 40 Kurita began the pursuit of fine art photography as a way to describe his profound reverence for nature. Kurita became inspired to retreat to nature in order to learn by connecting to its beauty. The resulting photographs are large hand-coated platinum prints carefully printed on handmade Gampi vellum.