MS :

In Japan, we have quite a large culture when it comes to photography and owning cameras. My grandfather was a collector of cameras, and he gifted me a Nikon to experiment with. But it was truly in my third year while studying at the University of the Arts in London when something shifted in me and determined the rest of my practice. I had decided to make a trip to Bangladesh to meet a friend and to potentially photograph a new culture. But funnily, I couldn’t make a single image, and stopped photographing completely for eight years. I think I probably felt a sort of distance from that world, and it made me uncomfortable taking images from the outside, but not truly understanding their purpose.

MS :

Yeah, I do. I had been married for a period of two years, and suddenly we were faced with my father-in-law falling extremely unwell and passing away rather suddenly. It all felt so quick, and we weren’t able to catch-up with our emotions and the reality of what we were facing. That is when I picked-up photography and began shooting again. In retrospect, it was probably my way of slowing down time and making sense of our reality.

MS :

I think this is primarily because I don’t see myself solely as a photographer. I would call myself a visual artist who works with any medium that is able to communicate my emotions. In the eight years that I wasn’t photographing, I was drawing compulsively, and it came to me a lot more naturally than photography. I think images aren’t enough to encompass everything I want to say. For example, if I were to denote people’s memories, or fragments of their lives, photography is sometimes enough, and at other time isn’t. I realised this especially while working on my photobook Sokohi, which is a photobook that tackles my father’s growing glaucoma, and my photographic imagination of what it might feel to see through the shadows. Here, illustrations really helped to construct a world, which may lay in front of my father’s gaze but never meets mine. As I’ve mentioned in the Women in Film & Photography 2021 Exhibition at the Objectifs Centre, that through the wall between us, I keep looking for the way to connect to my father’s world, one in which he is perceiving without relying on his vision.

MS :

I was interested in the idea of building a photobook since 2014, which is when I began to learn book-binding techniques. I have always been intrigued by how a photobook creates a world that isn’t just a book of information, but a dialogue between the maker and the viewer who may have their own interpretation. When I first had the idea of making Sokohi, I was using a planned process of working which included extensive notes and working with a lot of archives. But then I realised that this way of operating wasn’t working for the narrative that was about my father’s inner journey that is filled with new experiences of struggle as well as acceptance. That’s when I began working intuitively, and also designed it with a form that seems closest to his story. It mimics the spiral binding of the Visual Ease Black notebook, which uses white pens on black paper to make reading easier for people with impaired vision. Since he journaled all his life, this form of documentation was important to him, but eventually he had to abandon this notebook as well.

MS :

As Between is an ongoing project about my strained relationship with my mother, which I have abandoned for a bit. It’s a dissection of me as a woman and a mother and looking at my own mother through the same lens. My mother abandoned us in Tokyo to go and live in Okinawa as a social activist, and this created quite a strain. I haven’t completely come to terms with it and haven’t been able to get the appropriate distance from the project which is why I’ve paused it temporarily. However, it has led me to my next body of work, which was born out of a conversation with her when she said the drinking water in Okinawa was contaminated and undrinkable. It’s led me to working on a project called Aabuku, which means bubbles over foam, where I speak to people in the island who are affected by this contamination.

MS :

I am extremely inspired by Sociologist, Masahiko Kishi, author and educationist, Yoko Uema, sociologist, Sara Park, and contemporary artist, Natsumi Seo. I also find the documentary filmmaker Yang Yonghi’s work extremely important because I am inspired by the way she collects personal stories and conducts research to create documentary films. I have a notebook where I collect words that really inspire me, and I’m sharing an excerpt by her that I visit often below: ヤン・ヨンヒ「カメラを止めて書きます」(2023) 映画や本にできる話なんてたかが知れている。本当のノンフィクションは、誰にも言えない記憶や心情であろうだからこそ、せめて、掬い上げた話くらいはちゃんと伝えたいと思う…私の作品が、人々の中で語り合いが生まれる触媒になってほしい。そして私自身も触媒でありたい。生きている限り、伝え合うことを諦めたくないから。 Translation- ‘Stop the camera and write.’ There are only so many stories that could be turned into movies or books. True non-fiction is about memories and feelings that cannot be shared with anyone. So, I want to convey the stories I've gathered and want my work to be a catalyst for people to talk about. As long as I'm alive, I don't want to give up on communicating with one another.