The Grey Lines Between Fact and Fiction

INTERVIEW

The Grey Lines Between Fact and Fiction

Kenji Chiga

INTERVIEW

The Grey Lines Between Fact and Fiction

20.07.2026

Kenji Chiga

Writer

Zahra Amiruddin

In our current landscape, photography has transcended from being solely as an act of capturing reality, to include a varied imagination and artistic nonconformity. The process of blending ‘ways of seeing’ with ‘ways of thinking,’ has been accelerated with the ease that has been brought about by digital manipulation. Tokyo-based photographer, Kenji Chiga, is well-versed with this technique of photographing the invisible using highly conceptualised methodology..."

After having graduated with a physics degree from Osaka University in 2008, but honing his passion for photography, Chiga travelled to India on multiple occasions. There, he assisted at call centres and photography studios, later meeting a young man who is burdened by the strictures of the country’s caste system. The encounter culminated into a body of work titled Bird Night, and Then, which developed his obsession with the medium in a more full-time capacity.

In his newest body of work titled Evidence of Us, supported by the Arttaca grant, he uses melted photographs to shed light on the ‘Ore-Ore Sagi’ scam that has been prevalent in Japanese society since 2003. As the British Journal of Photography writes, the scam targets the country’s elderly population and tricks them into paying out large amounts of money, which are swindled into fraudsters’ bank accounts. While Chiga has already explored various versions of the scam in his work OS as well as Hijack Geni, through the Evidence of Us, he manipulates his own face multiple times using a smartphone app, posing as both victim and perpetrator. We learn more:

ZA :

As I delve into your photographic practice, I find that your imagery is full of scientific inquiry and your photographs almost feel like specimens in themselves. Do you feel like your science background has subconsciously/consciously seeped into your medium of expression?

KC :

Yes, I think I am unconsciously influenced by my science background. In addition to that, I try my best not to emotionally sway the viewer through my work. This is not to say that I think emotion isn’t important, but sometimes it overpowers any other discussion. Therefore, I think my practice leans more towards scientific thought. In particular, the work I shared with Arttaca was created by collecting evidence, and so I naturally treated the imagery more like specimens.

ZA :

Your artist statement mentions that your own aunt was a victim of these telephonic frauds that have been taking place in Japan since 2003. Is that what first prompted you to start working on this project?

KC :

Actually, what first prompted me was when my friend jokingly said "I have to try the ‘Ore-Ore Sagi’ fraud (which loosely translates to the ‘It’s me, it’s me! Scam’) to earn a living.” It got me thinking, since my mother was also targeted by a fraud group. Later, I found out that there were both perpetrators as well as victims within my own close acquaintance, and it was only after my constant shooting and research that I learned that my aunt too had been a victim of these crimes. Earlier, I was photographing her as an elderly person and not as a victim. But when I found-out the truth about her experiences, I realised that these crimes were rampant, and very close to home.

ZA :

Can you talk about your process of investigation while building your narrative of the events that were unfolding?

KC :

For starters, I met and interviewed both, the perpetrators and victims of the scam. Since that alone would have been a biased representation of the events, I also did my research through interviews, reports, novels, movies, and stories narrated on social networking sites. Since it was difficult to film the original crime scene, I researched why certain locations were selected to perform the scam, and purchased the tools used by fraudsters to help me understand how they would think and act in their daily lives. I realised that the hideouts included hotels, karaoke rooms, apartments, and cars which were secluded, soundproof, and easy to escape from. The tools they used included cell phones, IP phones, laptops, etc, and it helped to go through news footage to find out which model number of the tools were being used. This work is related to my past work, Hijack Gen, produced in 2022, which was made by melting and using the same paper used by special fraud groups to destroy evidence of their crimes.

ZA :

To me, the photographs almost look like geographies of various landscapes. Would you say these images are an attempt to showcase the topographies of life that the scamsters as well as victims are navigating through?

KC :

It is very interesting that you interpret it that way. The work was also made to understand and question what people would read from the abstract impressions that remained after the original image was melted and destroyed. Additionally, the melted portraits are essentially fictitious since they are made entirely from my face, so technically there isn’t any truth in them. But I feel good about the fact that people's imagination is great, regardless of the reality of what they are seeing.

ZA :

How did the Arttaca grant help in your research and development process?

KC :

I experimented with numerous iterations of printing and melting for this body of work. The grant enabled me to try quite a few times, for a long time since the results were unpredictable, and I needed significant drying time. It’s been great to have had the opportunity to bring the melted prints for the exhibition and have the chance to interact with various artists in Thailand.

ZA :

Your photography is often interspersed with both, black-and-white as well as colour within the same project. Since this is quite unusual, is it your way of showcasing both, past as well as present worlds?

KC :

Earlier, I used to make it a rule to divide my works by colour and black-and-white. However, I am no longer bound by that rule. In the case of my book, Hijack Geni (2022), I use black-and-white because there is simply more room for imagination with that approach. With Evidence of Us, since there is a close relationship between deceptions and reality, I use the colour photographs as a metaphor for the truth interspersed within the lies of the black-and-white imagery. I value a sense of discomfort within this work, and so I would rather mix the two approaches, rather than have them neatly matched.