Canon global

Childhood memories were the starting point

-Congratulations. How do you feel about winning an Excellence Award?

I was satisfied with simply submitting an entry, so I really couldn't believe it. I'd already been thinking about how I'd fix my piece once it got returned. After I submitted it, I continued taking pictures for "COLONY" regularly, and I've built up about fifty shots.

-Could you tell me about the concept behind your work?

I made it for my graduation project, and I started taking pictures for it about a year and a half before. The title came from a picture book about animals that we had in the house. I opened the book and someone from my family had written over the word "colony" in pencil, and I felt drawn to the word, and thought I'd put my series together centered on it. Colony in the biological sense means "a group formed for the purpose of procreation," and I thought there's a part of me that would like to be breathing in amongst such a group.

I'm the youngest of three sisters, and my two older sisters always got along and I was always left behind. I remember being taken care of by our pet Shiba Inu dog, Piccolo, and even now when I see a particularly large animal, I start to feel like I don't want to grow apart from my parents. It's a complex of mine.

-Why did you choose to study photography at the Art and Architecture School of Waseda University, Department of Photograph, Picture, Image?

When I was in second grade of high school, I took part in a video workshop at Waseda where I met professor Ken Yabuno and associate professor Yoichi Sato, and that convinced me. The workshop involved shooting a one-minute movie in the area around Waseda, and the professor really praised my video, saying it could "make waves around the world." But he didn't just say it to me, it turns out he says that to everyone. (laughs)

-Where did you get the idea to use images from old video footage?

There's only one videotape of my family at my house. One day I was watching it for the first time in about ten years, and there was a scene where Piccolo was walking towards the camera, and I thought, "aw, how nostalgic." And I kept watching that part over and over, and the tape started getting damaged. I wanted to preserve it somehow, and I was half crying as I recorded the playback. That was the start. In the middle of the night I set up my tripod facing the living room TV. My own act of taking those pictures was pitiful, but I didn't dislike it. I do like the act itself of snapping pictures of a television screen with an analog camera.

I also took pictures of a video of my sisters during the shichi-go-san festival. My sisters were getting all the attention so I hid out of view of the camera and jumped into the frame right before the picture was taken. I still remember how I felt at that time, and I wanted to channel that feeling into my work.

Lately I have been taking a lot of pictures of video that I've shot and played back on the TV. For example, I'll shoot a video of myself straddling a broom like a witch and jump, and photographing the scene I'm in the air. I remembered myself always jumping as a child as I took the picture.

Before I started doing photography, I felt as though everyday I was just acting out a part, and I don't like to recall those times. I'll sometimes suddenly start to feel down and wind up skipping school. But when I take pictures of old videos, I can change my bad feelings about the past into a joke. When I take pictures of myself getting in the way of my sisters' photo session, I feel as though I am acknowledging myself.

I want to engage myself with social problems

-In the year and a half you spent making the series, how did the project change?

At first I was mixing in regular snaps, but the screen captures started to take over, and lately it's just a series of those. There's also footage of my parents' wedding. Ryudai Takano, a teacher of mine who has helped me since I entered the school, saw my work and said, "It's like the world of that movie, 'Juon.' Scary!" (laughs) When I'm choosing the pictures, a story starts to take shape inside of me, and I try to construct the series with that in mind. I edit it with the sense of turning it into very simple, short story.

-Mr. Iizawa said that your works have a sense of reading your own present and future into the videos of the past, but that he wonders how that future will connect with the rest of society.

My school was a vocational school that held classes at night, so there were university students and working people, people of all ages mixed together. Those people have the ability to deal with reality and social problems within themselves through the creation of their art. But I don't have much life experience and my work is a result of acknowledging that I don't know how to deal with that kind of thing. By making my piece, I developed a consciousness, a feeling as though I was finally able to interact positively with the outside world for the first time. I don't think childhood-era complexes are a serious issue, but I think many people, anyone really, is dealing with similar issues, so I wanted to give a shape to that.

When I displayed the work in the graduation exhibition, I hung the pictures quite low, and a little girl seemed quite happy as she brought her face close to the photographs. I'd like to display the photos at a height that makes them easily viewed by children.