Statement

For many years, I have been drawn to the landscape of a lake and wetlands surrounded by mountains, viewed from a hillside.
 
Along the shore of this place, people of the Jōmon period once lived.
 
The lake was once larger, surrounded by vast wetlands. Today, much of the area has been reclaimed and transformed into rice fields. Changes in land use have also altered the water quality and vegetation. Yet, deep in the mountains, a small remnant of primeval wetland remains, where vegetation reminiscent of the former natural environment and the cycles of nature still endure.
 
As I continued to return to this place, a question gradually emerged:
 
What was the landscape felt by the Jōmon people?
 
This question became the starting point of Aquascape.
 
The work is neither an attempt to reconstruct the landscape of the Jōmon period nor an idealization of nature as it once was.
 
Nature is constantly changing. Plants, water, mist, and light are all in continual transformation. What I seek is not a place where the landscape has remained unchanged from the past, but places where, despite human intervention and environmental change, nature has not lost its ability to transform, renew, and circulate.
 
Carrying this question with me, my photography has expanded from Yamagata to lakes, wetlands, and watersides throughout Tohoku, including Fukushima and Miyagi. I visit places where I sense the presence of life and the cycles of nature: wetlands formed by volcanic activity, high-altitude wetlands, and places where natural cycles continue despite having been altered by human intervention.
 
Standing at the water's edge, the surface of the water becomes a boundary between reality and illusion.
 
The sky, mountains, trees, mist, and light are reflected upon it. Although they appear to be undeniably present, these reflections remain untouchable images. The actual landscape and the image born from it overlap within a single frame.
 
The surface of the water is also a boundary between liquid and air.
 
There, various boundaries emerge: between land and water, air and water, reality and illusion, and the past and the present.
 
The photographs are primarily made around the time of sunrise.
 
Since ancient times, people have been attentive to the movement of the sun and to natural light, beginning the activities of each day in response to its changing presence. I place myself in these landscapes as if listening to the quiet dialogue that human beings have long maintained with nature.
 
In the mountainous regions of Yamagata, there is a light that cannot be understood simply by the time of sunrise.
 
Light entering diagonally over the mountain ridges touches the mist and the surface of the water, and within the blue of early morning, red and other colors may appear for only an instant. Time does not emerge from the clock alone, but through the relationship between terrain and sun, atmosphere and water.
 
I wait for the particular state of light and color that can exist only in that place.
 
This is not about extending time through long exposure. Rather, I place myself at the boundary where light is changing, seeking to capture the threshold of the world that emerges in that instant. Sometimes it lasts only a moment; at other times, it includes the duration necessary for the light to be received.
 
What matters is not the shutter speed, but recognizing the time in which the phenomenon becomes possible.
 
Through photography, I draw the world with light.
 
The subtle variations of color that can be captured through digital photography, the blue of early morning, and the gradations created by mist and light are also essential elements of the work.
 
What lies here is not an attempt to recover a landscape from the past.
 
It is an act of looking into the cycles that have not yet been lost within a nature that continues to change.
 
It is to place myself within a particular landscape and physically experience its light, water, mist, and presence of life.
 
And, while imagining the world that may have been felt by those who once lived beside these waters in the distant past, to enter once again, as someone living in the present, into a quiet dialogue with nature.
 
What was the landscape felt by the Jōmon people?
 
I remain at the water's edge, carrying that question with me.
 
An ongoing photographic exploration within “The Cycle of Being.”
→ Artist’s Statement / Philosophy