Canon global

I like photographs.
I don't just mean the act of taking or looking at photographs, I love how being involved with photographs makes my human lifestyle itself develop and unfold.
I think up to now I'd been travelling half-heartedly.
When I turned 30, I decided I wanted to see the Carnival in Rio. That triggered something in my mind and when I looked into it I found out that Kishin Shinoyama had made his "OLELE OLALA" work there when he was 30 years old.
When I found that out, I decided that I didn't want this to be another half-hearted trip, and I took off for Brazil.
I spent about eight months living it up in Central and South America.
The background kept changing, and I was there in the middle of it.
As proof of this I took pictures, and kept on taking pictures.

I'm happy to think that the people who always thought I was just some dude who likes taking long holidays will realize "That's not all he is!" when they find out I've won this award.

At any rate, I'd like to present these photographs as an homage to my teacher.

727 pieces of paper, on which the viewer wrote comments, were stuck around my works.
I truly enjoyed seeing the rise of the paper which had increased day by day, so I think I was indeed in "enjoyment loop".
I greatly appreciate their participation.

With regards to this act of travelling around the world taking self-portraits, they're not just travel snaps, they're a good communication with that place and region. They're a record of his interaction with the world while being self-portraits at the same time. In a sense, it's like enjoying photography as a sort of performance. It's not an act of statically observing things, but of playing via photography. There's a sense of the joy of travelling with photography, and I can relate to the use of the camera as a medium in such an open way. It's good to see such cheery pictures in such a dark world.