TRAVERSE TOKYO

I photographed these at Llyod Kahn’s home, who lives in a town called Bolinas, about two hours toward the ocean, after crossing San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. I looked into what kind of life style he led for a report in “HUGE.” In a spacious building site, there were houses built here and there; within that there was an editing house, a terrace house, a shed… And where all of these houses stood, there were animal bones scattered about. While he was making Whole Earth Catalogue and Shelter Magazine, he made books by himself, built a house by himself; he is someone that treasured anything that resonated with him. His house was in the architectural Shaker style, and I thought that I would like the Shaker style as well if I were to ever build a house, so I asked him why he chose this particular architecture. He said was that a Shaker house is very functional and the maintenance is very easy. He’s an existentialist, or rather a minimalist. I think that he only wants things that realistically exist around him. So that is why, it goes the same for bones, while it is something that provides us and is so close to humans in this natural world, it is fascinating that it is so mysterious and photogenic. The interior of Llyod’s house is not particularly fashionable, but I notice a sense of awareness of how he places bones he found, and I envy that sort of life. In Tokyo, you tire from all of the information you are given. I live in a place surrounded by lakes and forests, and because there is so much nature at hand, I can appreciate for instance the time when the light of the pond is beautiful, or how beautiful the forest is in the winter in my everyday life. And as a matter of fact, Irving Penn continued to photograph bones for a long time. When I was younger, I understood the appeal of bones as the subject, but I did not know the reason why Penn was so drawn to them, even though Penn must have been inspired by Cezanne and many other artists. I do not know what animal the bones I photograph belong to, but I have been able to think of it as important as something that reflects a life. Perhaps, I feel as though the life is being shared through its bones.

Primarily in portraits, I have to understand the texture, the hair style, form, what kind of body this person has, how is it formed, and then based off of that, the camera is placed… If all of those are not captured, it does not become a portrait. My parents’ home was a photo studio and around second or third grade, one day my father brought home a trophy for some photography prize. I casually thought that something good must have happened, but when I take the time to remember the prize winning photograph, the subject was an old man wearing a beret so his skin had this texture, and my young heart remembered that he wore a medal on his chest. In my twenties when I first started taking photographs, I photographed all kinds of things along with portraits, but when I thought about how to view things like fashion, advertisements, or commercials, I was raised in a photo studio, so I felt it was natural to continue to take portraits. Something I have always felt is that a photograph is truly when the one subject in the photograph appears photographic. If you pursue one thing, like the quality of the skin, or the form, or the person’s expression in their eyes, to be shown properly, I noticed that it raises the photograph’s completeness greatly. For instance in Irving Penn’s cigarette series, a cigarette someone smoked thrown on the ground in the Fifties, you sense its different backgrounds, it is shown with its proper texture, and there is nothing that gets in the way including the lighting.
And to Avedon’s Marilyn Monroe, the reason he chose the photograph with the emptiest eyes, I think because no one has seen that side of Monroe. I am always thinking about those things. Of course in your work, you have to join multiple elements together and then incorporate them, but fundamentally I think it is good if portraits become that. Bones are associated with many of those photographic elements. For that meaning, bones have given me the chance to think about many things. Just changing the lens or the angle makes it look different, and the time I spend examining the bones as the feature in my study is very exciting. Bones are not human, but I think it oozes character as the subject.

There is something that I have realized over the years. I always intend to work while imagining everything from the moment before shooting to completion, but there is a sort of photographic magic from when I see it with my eye and when it gets printed and it becomes level. The beauty of the details of photographs that only analogue can produce entirely surpasses the parts that I imagine and is magic. I think about a lot when I am shooting, but it exceeds that idea. That is the beauty and charm of analogue, but digital has none of that. Analogue lets you enjoy photography while believing the magic. For digital, however close it is to analogue, as a photographer that numerical work is the least interesting. (Laughs) When it is analogue, like depth, you wonder about all kinds of things as you look into the viewfinder and take photographs, but I have a feeling that there are surprisingly not many people who share that excitement of it changing into something two dimensional. That is because they have only seen the superficial result of a photo changing into different printed items. I think that you can enjoy the gap of what you see becoming something else, when you shoot with film. The young generation of photographers’ digital work, often focus on the idea, rather than the texture or impression of it、but photographers in the past they have the not only texture and impression, but also the idea. So thinking how you finished with a platinum print wanting to make it look like a Picasso painting, it does not really suit the people from the past. It is not even close.