Osaka-based photographer Kenji Shibata has a new series of photographs ‘Locked in the ether’, currently on exhibit at the Tachibana Gallery in Osaka through December 20, 2014. The artist is not in the artistic business of flower preservation. In fact his process is quite the opposite, with Shibata creating flower ice cubes, only to photograph them as they are thawing. The gorgeous blooms are captured as they fight to sustain life and beauty both, living against the clock. These magnificent and memorable images are but a nanosecond in time and eternity, as the blooms wither away into oblivion — most likely as trash without a decent burial.