“enlarged portrait”
These images are created by enlarging the figures of some people I have photographed in the past several years. I feel that a photograph emerges by transcending the photographer, and this uncontrollable feeling has made me realize anew an attribute of photography. As a result, I could avoid the limit of replacing the image itself with a simplistic interpretation to make a story out of the image. My approach is far from explaining specific intentions, structuring generalizations, and developing linear cognition. Eventually, it is my hope that the remaining images still have reality; that is more important than the premise that meaning is given to the process of production or the photographer remains detached from the image. I cannot define photography, but what attracts me is consistent because it is a medium to embody reality (actuality) in a form that is sdetached from real things that are absent, while directly confronting the world. Lewis Baltz says that all people already know the world’s outward appearances more than they should. I believe that his words continue to give us suggestions.
Selecting judge: Shino Kuraishi
This work shows enlarged pictures of people, who were photographed very small in the original pictures taken by the artist in the past. Most of those people were unaware of being photographed. Many other entries are the usual portraits of people such as lovers, spouses, and friends, and these pictures can be formed by agreement in advance or compromise of views between the photographer and the subject. I feel a planned harmony there. In Suzuki’s work, on the other hand, the photographer and the subject are not interested in each other personally. Even at the first printing, the subject was away in the background. A heterogeneous quality of ’other people,’ who are forgotten and totally indifferent, is discovered later and brought out. A background becomes a foreground, and a secondary role is enlarged. Though it is a simple way to force a photographic hierarchy to change in reverse, it is all the more effective. At least this level of deliberation is expected for “New Cosmos” of “Photography.” This work complies with the trend in the 90s, in that ’others’ in public spaces are brought to the fore again, and I can give similar examples. At the moment, it is a valuable experiment in Japan.
