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Yoshiyuki Okuyama has won prizes for his student films and has worked in fashion photography and other areas. His book is a collection of works that expresses dreams he has experienced. But, how exactly did these works, which mix dreams and reality, come into being?

I wanted to express the delicacy of dreams

-Is it true that you began making films before getting into photography?

That’ s right. I made clay animations for three years in junior high, and I got into proper filmmaking once I reached high school because I was absolutely drawn to images. I’ m the type of person who wants to try to do everything myself, so I directed, wrote the screenplays, worked the camera, built the sets, and edited the films on my own. In 2010, I really got serious about filmmaking with my fourth film, which featured the actor Naoto Takenaka. But, with that film I got everything out of my system, so I’ m distancing myself from film for a little while.

-Why did you get into photography?

It started when I bought a used camera to help compose my shots while I was making films. Taking photos with that camera triggered my interest in photos, which are intriguing because of what you can express something with only “pictures” that have no dialog or sound. With film, you can generally figure out the relationship between the characters as you watch them. But, with a photo, it is difficult to conclude decisively whether the subjects are lovers or a family or simply strangers. The attraction for me about photos is that they have an abstract, ambiguous quality—you can’ t figure out a work’ s implications from its appearance. So, my idea is always to make use of this attraction and turn my eye to the hazy, suspended things in your mind—things that sit on the line between reality and imagination—that are difficult to describe in words.

-Can you explain the impetus behind the concept of “Girl,” your submission for this competition?

There was a period when late at night, even after going to bed, I’d only have short bursts of light sleep and wouldn’t get any sleep until dawn. There was one time where I caught sight of the drape of the bed sheets lit by the early morning gloom. All I had to do was touch this gentle curve, created so miraculously, and it would collapse instantly. I associated the beauty of this fragility and this transience with dreams and with the relationship between myself and the girl in the photos. Even if you see something beautiful in your dreams, you quickly forget it. I wanted to express this delicacy, that everyone has experienced, that stirs the soul ever so subtly. The girl who appears in the photos is, in fact, a friend who often appears in my dreams.

-It’s a dream that’s an admixture of color and black and white.

Yes. There are things I’ve scanned and enlarged from photos taken on Polaroid film, or duplicates of photos I’ve printed out, or things that I’ve put directly on film. Dreams are strung together intermittently without any sense of unity, and I wanted to express that ambience and atmosphere by varying the media. For example, when you duplicate a photo, the image is flattened and one level of disconnection appears between the reality and the photo. I believe this gap expresses exactly the disconnection between the mind of my friend and mine.

-Your sequencing is really tight, as we might expect from a filmmaker

By inserting shots of a sheet as delimiters between dreams, I created a repeating pattern where you wake up after seeing a short dream and catch sight of the sheet that embodies the dream in reality. At first there were so many sheets that it looked overdone, so I eventually left out several photos of sheets where the pattern flowed naturally without them. The sequencing is the element I am most conscious of when creating my work. I think what determines a photographer’s caliber is his selection of photos and the starting point and sequence in which he presents the photos.

-What is the concept of your exhibition?

Immediately after I heard that I had won, I sketched out a quick layout of the 4-meter-by-4-meter wall space I was given to exhibit on. Naturally, that initial layout gradually transformed into another layout over the months as I refined my exhibition plans. I puzzled over it endlessly and switched it back and forth until I finally had a Eureka moment. I took that final layout straight to the framers. After that, I was tidying up my room when I found my very first rough sketch. I had forgotten about it. And, what blew me away was that it was exactly the same as the final layout I had fretted over all those months. In the end, all that work I did merely brought me in a full circle. Because of that, I’ m convinced now that what I intuitively think of as good is what I really want to make.