Shrink wrapped love: Japanese photographer takes togetherness to the edge with vacuum-packed portraits of couples

If you are ever in a nightclub in Tokyo and the place is shutting down and someone asks you and your date if you would like to come back to his place and get shrink wrapped, think twice before accepting. Japanese photographer Haruhiko Kawaguchi has a personal project called "Flesh Love" and he’s still looking for more subjects.
 
So far, he has photographed about 80 couples snuggled and wrapped together in vacuum-packed futons bags. An equal opportunity shrink wrapper, Kawaguchi mixes and matches his pairings. He has wrapped men with women, and women with women.
 
Before shooting, he spends a good deal of time arranging his “models” bodies and then, surprise, he uses a household vacuum and quicker than you can say, “I can’t breathe!” he sucks all the air out of the bag.

Evacuated of life sustaining air, the plastic futon bag shrinks to fit the couple’s bodies. Then, right there with them on his kitchen floor he photographs his handcrafted packages of love.

 
Clearly, he has not read the warning labels that the lawyers have put on plastic bags warning of putting your head in them. I guess he assumed that putting two whole bodies in a bag was okay.
 
As a photographer, I find the project intriguing. I am the kind of shooter who would waste time photographing couples in the nightclubs. I’d never would have thought of putting them in shrink-wrap, though. But hey, I am not an artist.

 
Speaking of his experience, Kawaguchi says that, “the men panic more often than the women. A few have struggled for air while in the bag and one man ended up pissing himself. The women just want to look good.”
 
Great, losing it right there on your kitchen floor. This definitely sounds a party I want to miss.

 
Check out the behind-the-scenes video below. It is either very funny or over-the-top bizarre. Take your pick.

(Via Feature Shoot)