PRESENTATION
My works mostly consist of snapshots that I took without any special rules or policies. In fact, I simply photographed them just as dictated by my own natural desires and intuition. While filming things around me, I thought about the meaning each object bears relative to myself. I was suddenly struck with an inspiration that all things that exist in this world change their meanings according to time and situation. To put it another way, meanings exist only within frames set by us humans.
The photos created based on simple desires and intuition embodied my idea as they became tools replacing the parts that could not be expressed in writing or speech. While looking at my photos, I found such-and-such thoughts were mine, and questioned myself: “Are these thoughts original to me?; or are they outcomes of my environment? If so, did I choose that environment myself; and what was my final choice?” I thus enjoyed conflicts between these questions.
All of my works are black-framed. This is an expression to suggest that although we humans appear to be thinking freely, we are actually allowed to think only within certain frames, such as those of the environment and of the process of our growth.
Without exception, I must be within such frames and be thinking or acting suitably for such frames. Our world is full of contradictions, so it is hard to accurately define righteousness. I would like to find answers to these questions as I continue taking photos and re-arranging frames.
I feel I could somehow understand the relationship between your photos and yourself. But it remained within your very personal limits, so personal I could not feel anything substantial from your photos. You seem to have arranged something too idealistic in your own way and confined it within your own world. I thought it would be better for you if you came up with ideas to “show” your photos to others.
Selector’s Comment & Questions and Answers
Minoru Shimizu
“Once you put something in a frame, it becomes acceptable as a photo.” Indeed, framing is one of the intrinsic aspects of photos, the meaning of which I can understand. In your case, you exhibited sets of three framed photos by arranging each of these sets further in a larger frame. What’s your intention behind this?
(Kim)
An old Chinese proverb goes: “Three people can make a tiger.” This is an allegory that even a falsehood can be widely spread if many people say it is true. My idea behind the sets of three photos is that three photos will have the power of persuasion and provide a cue for viewers to start conversations, which may possibly complicate viewpoints taken by individual viewers according to their respective situations. I decided to use sets of three photos because such complexity seemed to suit my “undefined perspective.”