Why do I take photographs?

When asked, I still have to think for a moment.

Because I love taking photographs.

That is part of it.

But that alone does not explain it.

Perhaps I want to use photography to convey something.

I started by buying an SLR because I wanted to take beautiful photographs,

photographs with a soft, blurred background,

and now I want to take photographs that communicate.

But I cannot always explain in words what I want to convey.

A sensation inside me, something I am thinking about, a sense of unease I felt in daily life.

Things that change slightly when put into words, I try to translate into photographs.

Perhaps that is what photography is for me.

Photography can convey reality as it is.

It can preserve what is happening in that moment.

But what I want to convey through photography is not only what appears in the frame.

What I felt when I looked at that photograph.

The time that flowed in that place.

The distance between people.

How can such things be kept within a single photograph?

That is what I keep thinking about.

In making my works, I have thought again and again about “borders.”

Between people.

Between nature and the artificial.

Between myself and others.

Between Japan and abroad.

Between reality and memory.

Lately, rather than the borders themselves, I have become drawn to what lies “between” them.

Places that belong entirely to neither side.

A distance that is close, yet never allows complete understanding.

The space between what can be put into words and what cannot.

I feel there is something there that only photography can convey.

That is why I don’t limit myself to photography alone.

I cut photographs, layer them, add painting, make them three-dimensional, turn them into video.

When I feel photography alone cannot convey something, I use another method, or try to break out of photography altogether.

Even so, the starting point is often a photograph.

Taking photographs is not the goal in itself;

using photographs to convey somethingis what I also think about.

Sometimes what I want to convey is clearly defined.

It might be about society, relationships with people, war, or nature.

But I don’t want to explain everything.

If I hand the viewer an answer,

“This is what it means,”

I feel it would end there.

So I want to leave some open space.

I place what I felt into the work, and the viewer layers their own experiences and memories onto it.

The same work becomes something different for each person who sees it.

I think that is better.

I don’t take photographs only for myself.

I take them to be seen by someone.

And I take them so that someone will feel something.

Whether that is empathy, unease, or a question, I don’t know.

I just hope something remains.

After seeing a photograph, a person pauses for a moment.

Looks again.

Remembers something within themselves.

If that happens, perhaps that is enough.

That is why I am still taking photographs.

Not so much to find something,

but to convey something.

I take what is inside me and bring it out in the form of a photograph.

And within someone who sees it, another meaning is born.

That repetition, I think, is what photography is for me.