foam magazine # 32 talent
You did a BA in Art and Literature at Waseda University in Tokyo. What a great combination. Do you feel studying literature influenced your artistic practice in some way? Yes, absolutely. I started to take photo graphs at university. I had no knowledge of photography, but I knew intuitively from the start that photography was similar to poetry. I like to read litera ture, especially novels and poetry. I was always reading at high school, so I went to Waseda University to learn more about literature. It was only by coinci dence that I joined a photography group. I find poetry highly visual. It is the simple e xpression of the word and evokes aspects of memory and the im agination in me – things I associate with the image as well. I think the common aspect of memory and imagination is the blank space that allows people to imagine freely with minimum information. Lit erature is similar. They are just words but one can imag ine so many things when reading them. The more I take photographs, the more I think the two are very closely linked. My feeling that poetry and photo graphy are similar is very Japanese. We have developed a particular photograph ic tradition. Take the shi-shashin move ment, meaning private photography, which has developed into a trend in the photobook culture here. My images may not align with that trend, but I’ve been very influenced by those photobooks. Given that you have a literature degree, are there any particular writers that influence your visual aesthetic, or the way you work? Literature has always been with me, and I feel it has influenced my way of think ing, my philosophy. It’s not a concrete influence, it’s highly ambiguous. Put simply, literature makes my philosophy and philosophy makes my work. They are all connected like a Möbius Loop. You are currently an assistant professor at the Photography Centre at the Tokyo University of the Arts. What do you feel is the most important thing students can learn from you? What do you try to get through to them? The most important thing students can learn from me is to try new things, to see many things and to make lots of mis takes because there is no right way in art. I want them to learn how to convey
their work to the outside world. In Japan, students who study photography have a tendency to stay in their own world, so I try to advise them to look at their own world from a distance. I feel it’s impor tant to think for yourself and to try to get your work seen by as many people as
I want to capture the world. interview by Anne-Celine Jaeger possible, like I’m doing now with the Foam Talent issue. I try to inspire them to contact people around the world, to apply to lots of programs or competi tions and to make new work. I can’t give students anything concrete, but I hope to create a dialogue. In the series you submitted, Approach to Invisible, you are looking to reach beyond the invisible, to capture that which we cannot see, that which is mysterious to us, beyond the mist and fog. Is your starting point a philosophical one, or would you say it’s more poetic, a lyrical investigation into what is invisible to the naked eye? I don’t start my work from a philosoph ical or poetic point of view. I can say this though: I want to capture the world, which spreads across the invisible sight. It’s not so much a lyrical investigation as an objective sampling, like a geologist might collect one grain of sand at a time from a new layer of earth. Of course I do this with some philosophical sense and an aesthetic sensibility, forever thinking about how I can express it. I think the Japanese may also have a special point of view when looking at scenery as an invisible thing. We see fog, rain and vapour as something ambigu ous rather than concrete.
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You say in your statement that your fundamental reason for working is: ‘I understand that I can’t see the invisible but the act of taking a photograph motivates me to search for it.’ Where do you think that investigation will lead you, and how are you intending to develop it further? I have a strong desire to see; I always want to see more than what is visible and yet I know I can’t see the invisible. But I believe there is such a thing as the in visible because the word exists. So, I continue to search for it. My work leads me to somewhere I don’t know, which in turn makes me go there physically and mentally. I don’t attempt to deter mine a particular subject. What I see appears suddenly, when I don’t expect it. It’s haphazard. To what extent would you say that contemporary Japanese photographers have a particular colour sensitivity? In particular I’m thinking of yourself, Rinko Kawauchi and Syoin Kajii. If they do, how would you explain where it comes from and why? What is it about Japanese culture that brings out those colours? I think the biggest reason for a particular colour sensitivity in Japanese photo graphers is the humid climate and the physical aspect of the colour of our eyes. We have clearly different eyes and skin color from western people, and the natural sunlight is also different here. Of course the Japanese traditional disposi tion is different as well, but that has been cultivated by our climate and the solid ground of Japan. I want to think a great deal about this colour culture. It’s a unique point for expression, of which we are proud. What are you currently working on? I’m working on two new, challenging series. •