Canon global

I took unaffected photographs of my classmates

-When and where did you take the photographs that won this award?

I was in high school until the spring of 2010. I always took my camera to school with me, and would take photos whenever I had the chance. My submitted work is a collection of photographs I took while at school or on my way to and from school, and the girls in the photographs are my close friends. I photographed a lot of their unaffected portraits. I already graduated from high school so now I will never be able to take photos like these again. And even if, for example, a professional photographer is commissioned to come to our school and tries to take photographs just like these, it would be difficult to capture the girls in such unguarded ways. They would definitely stiffen up. In that sense, these photographs are pieces that only I could have taken at that time. That's what I like about them. They are full of precious memories, so they are very dear to me.

-When you put these together, from all the photographs you took at school, was there something you considered or used as a rule?

Our school is coeducational, and I took photographs of both boys and girls, but when it came to putting the work together I naturally gravitated to photographs of only girls. I think this was because I wanted to narrow down the elements and make a neat composition. But when I selected the photographs, I wanted to include a lot of different scenes and settings. I also wanted to show each person's individuality and relationships. I didn't worry too much about whether they were presentable as photographs or not. Instead, I put importance on subjectivity when selecting them. As I selected them and arranged the order, I had a very strange feeling; I felt that, although I couldn't see it, the correct answer already existed somewhere. In Natsume Soseki's Yume Juya (Ten Nights of Dreams), there is a story about a sculptor named Unkei. The story tells that the sculptor isn't shaving off the wood, but is digging out the already existing facial features, eyebrows and nose, etc., from within the wood. My feeling was similar to this, or in a sense, I felt like all I had to do was find the correct answer.

-In your submitted work you took photographs of a world very close to you. Did you have any concerns that pursuing your surroundings may not turn out to be good as works of art?

No, I didn't. First of all, all of the girls I photographed are really pretty. And high school is a very special space. Even when you are tardy it's not like you won't be forgiven, so in many senses it is a unique situation that is enclosed and protected from the outside. I was convinced that the presence of high school girls, as they have fun and act the way they want to act, would be an interesting subject. I didn't know whether it would be appreciated or not, but I was certain that for myself it was something worth taking.

Each person is like a little universe

-What is the meaning in the title, “beyond the universe”?

High school is severed from society, and is a unique place where students are very energetic and have fun. I had a sense that it was a separate and different world. So in the title I expressed this sense of my high school being somehow in a different universe. Also, I felt that each person in my photographs is like her own little universe. They all have little universes inside them. I have fun when I am with my friends, of course, but however much fun we have together and laugh together, we can't step outside of our own existence, and this is somehow lonely. This was a feeling I had, and I thought this title would be a good way to express this.

-When did you begin photography?

In my second year of high school. My grandfather bought a new digital camera and he gave me his old film camera. I began to take this camera to school, and it became a daily routine for me to take photographs. This was the first time to put my photographs together as one piece of work. I looked at many collections of photography to learn how to put photos together as a portfolio. I always liked collections of photography, but when I became conscious about making my own work I started to pay more attention. It was a great help that my school library had a lot of photography books, but even then it was not enough so I also went to the National Diet Library. I looked at works by Mika Ninagawa and Takashi Homma, and tried my best to understand the structure of their works.

-Now that you graduated from high school, are you looking towards a different theme?

I'm now at the phase of photographing a variety of things and scenes that I never noticed before. I now go to a film school, so I will work hard with that, too. But I think the most important thing I must do now is substantiate my inner self. I don't think I can suddenly be vested with a uniqueness that can make any photograph a piece of art. So I want to seriously consider and establish what it is that I like, what it is that I can immerse myself in. I don't want to be in a state where, if I were stripped of photography and film, I would have nothing left. I think in that state nothing I create would be interesting. So I want to use the time to first make myself emotionally rich.