Roadside Lights ⅵ

　Photographing as the snow falls and piles up around me brings back old memories. I remember playing outside until my boots were filled with snow, and how difficult it was to take them off once I went back inside. Or digging into snowbanks to create secret hideouts for myself. While my childhood memories of the snow are rather sweet, life in winter in the northernmost part of Japan where I grew up was harsh. Sometimes the blizzards were so strong it was impossible to put one foot in front of...

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Prisoners’ Road

About the project “Prisoner Road” TThe “Prisoners’ Road” - Representing what can’t be seen If you want to give photographic expression to something that has been buried in history, you need to represent it in some form. Representation is reproduction, that is, the process of re-expressing the original object. This project endeavours to visualise something that has become weathered and invisible, and to represent (reproduce) something that is essentially invisible, such as the concepts of grat...

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Roadside Lights I

The Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu once said of John Cage's music: "Meaning is never fully distinct; it is almost alive. It takes on different forms and reveals itself uniquely to each interpreter". In the context of my work, I hope that the viewer's interpretation will transform the concrete image—the landscape with vending machine—into the abstract, so that the meaning can break free from the conventions of photography and remain indistinct and vivid. My encounter with...

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Being There

They can be found in metropolitan areas, of course, but also in the furthest corners of the mountainous areas and the end of a promontory. I had wondered in such cases, “Who uses this machine?” The vending machines do not appear in any special or extraordinary place. Rather, they appear in ordinary places: a non-descriptive end-of-the road or in front of someone’s house, for instance. Today, it won’t be an overstatement to say that the vending machine has become the most familiar sight that s...

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Railroad crossing

Once, as I was standing in front of a closed railroad crossing, I found myself in thought. Railroad crossings are places that exist anywhere. They are places where everyone has at least once stopped in their tracks. The gate descends; the warning bell sounds. In this town at Japan’s northernmost tip, a town without even traffic lights, the only place I stopped at all was the railroad crossing. I think back to my childhood, and I hear the strangely peaceful sounds of a railroad crossing. I can...

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Identity as Uygur

Where is the identity as Uygur heading to? This question always comes up to my mind when I visit Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region where everything is rapidly changing since my first visit. In elementary schools, Uygur children are now studying in Chinese, not in their own language anymore. They all sing Chinese songs and use Chinese textbooks. This area was once known as a frontier but now there are many streets lined with buildings. Old town becomes a tourist spot. To think about this situat...

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