I created this split-screen video work during a stay in Singapore. The left screen is a video of me taking a shower with photographs I had taken in Singapore. This video depicts how the ink peeled off the photographs as I showered. The right screen is a video of me looking at the photographs and talking while trying to recall what had been in those areas where the ink had peeled off. These two videos placed side by side make up this work.

The work's theme is the relationship between photography and memories. It also poses the question: Which can be evidence of our past — what is captured in photographs or what is remembered by us as memories? In other words, the work considers the relationship between evidence and facts through the lens of the relationship between photography and memories. I had misgivings about the idea that facts disappear in the absence of evidence, or that facts are rewritten when false evidence is presented.

My entry point into this exploration was the history of Singapore and Japan, and I took the saying mizu ni nagasu [literally “let the water carry it away”] as my keyword. Working from these concepts, I attempted to give my work a perspective that encompassed more than a consideration of the photographic medium and make it open-ended.

The saying mizu ni nagasu means to forget past troubles as if they had never happened. It equates to the English expression “forgive and forget”. However, the expression “forgive, but never forget” describes the history between Singapore and Japan. These were the words of Lee Kuan Yew, the founding Prime Minister of Singapore. He apparently said these words when a monument was erected to the victims of Japan's occupation of Singapore during WWII. In Singapore, there are many museums that preserve materials from that time as well as memorial parks and stone monuments, and from these I was able to learn more about the history of both countries. I wondered if I were to replace “forgive, but never forget” with photographs and memories, would I be able to say “I have no photographs, but I have what I remember”.

With this in mind, I washed the ink off printed photographs and later tried to remember what was in the photographs. I was also attempting to see how much I, as a photographer who creates photographic images on a daily basis, actually recalled about my photographs.

I literally had a “naked encounter” with the photographs in the shower room as I washed the ink away. At first glance, this seems comical, but I did this to avoid the political themes in the background of the work coming to the fore and limiting how the work would be perceived. So I purposefully incorporated a performance element in the work of me wearing a shower hat.

My goal with this work was to assert that there are facts we remember even in the absence of evidence. But when I actually tested my hypothesis, I realized this was not always the case and that there were many things I couldn't remember without the photographs. I felt a contradiction: some things do not flow in the water, but other things unfortunately do.

However, I find this contradiction and inconsistency interesting. Despite the emphasis on management and record keeping, and the frequent calls for so-called correctness and consistency, I think there are many contradictions that spill outside of these constraints, and many things that I like and feel attracted to even though I don't understand why. I feel there is a richness to be found in being honest at times about the fluctuations that lie between logic and intuition.