— You mean erasing parts of the photo image?

That's right. I used photo-editing software to erase any unnecessary elements, like people's expressions or signs in the background. It wasn't my intention to doctor the photos so you couldn't tell things had been erased. Instead, I edited the photos quite roughly, which resulted in disconcerting images that almost seemed like graphic art. From there, I experimented with a lot of techniques to make the images look more photo-like again. I eventually hit on the very simplistic idea of retaking the images with a film camera. Developing the film aggressively makes the images grainy, which effectively neutralizes the slick digital texture.

— So it was the photo works you arrived at through this trial-and-error process that earned you an Honorable Mention at the New Cosmos of Photography.

I was incredulous when I won, because I had absolutely no idea I would be recognized at all. I had never experienced any acknowledgement for my work previously, so it felt as if I had been rescued. The award changed how I approached making photographic works.

— I understand you started out as an artist creating photo collections in simple zine-like formats.

It all started with me making little leaflets that I gave to my skateboarding buddies. Most of my friends in junior high and high school who were into skateboarding had diverse tastes. So we tried recording stuff ourselves and making something like a radio show. I decided to make a zine that we could hand out. I would piece together my photos and stories written by others and print them on convenience store copy machines. I didn't feel self-conscious about handing them out because it was among friends, and sharing stuff like that is a lot of fun, you know. Once I had built up a stockpile of photos, I started making my own zines and handing them out to people I knew.

— How did these zines become a publication medium for you?

After I had been making my own zines for a while, around 2009 or 2010, a publisher called Parapera (now Newfave) asked me if I wanted to make a zine and participate in Zine's Mate, which was the precursor to the Tokyo Art Book Fair. That was the first time I created a zine consciously thinking about the format as something to sell.

— From early on in your career, you took your works overseas. You exhibited at the photo event Unseen in 2012 in the Netherlands, and the following year in 2013, you were the first recipient from The Outset I Unseen Exhibition Fund at the Unseen Photo Fair. Then in 2014, you held a solo exhibition at Amsterdam's Foam photography museum. You quickly broadened your sphere of activities, and it seems your overseas career preceded your career in Japan. How did that come about?

The way you describe it, people might think my career was going smoothly. But that's far from the truth. I simply had a lot of time on my hands. I was selected for an Honorable Mention Award at the New Cosmos of Photography in 2008 and later I received the top prize at another competition. But neither of these awards immediately changed my circumstances and my photo activities didn't expand the way I expected. I sensed there were no more openings for me in Japan, so I began researching information overseas. Whenever I found someplace interesting — not just bookstores or galleries but also overseas bloggers who were influential at the time — I would sent off images of my photos.

— So you approached them directly on your own.

My English was even worse then than it is now. I would write a message of two or three really basic sentences and send out my images. Something really simple like: “Please look at my photos. Daisuke Yokota.” [laughs]

After sending my images all over the place, eventually Tim Baber who runs an online gallery called Tiny Vices published some photos I had sent him a couple months earlier. I distinctly remember how ecstatic I was that he had taken my work seriously.

— How did you get your photos exhibited at Unseen in the Netherlands?

An artist overseas who had seen my zine Back Yard contacted me. He said they were putting together an artist collective called AM Projects and he asked me to join. I didn't understand the language at all, but I definitely wanted to participate. To start, a gallery in Dubai called East Wing had booked a corner space to exhibit at Unseen, and AM Projects planned to exhibit there. My initial intention was just to send my works to them, but they were stopped by customs and never arrived. So I had to rush around and take the works to the exhibition myself.

— Your production techniques that focus on the constituent materials of photographs also appear in your exhibitions. For example, you developed an expansive installation for the MATTER / Vomit exhibition at the Aichi Triennale 2016.

I don't consider them to be anything special, as they are just ideas that come to me from my daily work. For the Aichi Triennale, I printed out photos I hadn't exhibited before on a huge roll of paper. But as the printer kept printing and pushing out the paper, the roll began to ripple and bunch up. I thought the paper in that condition looked very cool. Another thing I really like are the coated textures you get if you apply gelatin on photosensitive paper. So I wondered if I could bring out the true materiality of photographs in this way and exhibit it. That's why I lacquered the huge printed roll with wax. When I did it, the paper became soggy and damaged where the wax was applied, but that just made it better in my eyes. So the next time, I scrubbed the waxed roll with a mop to intentionally distress it.

— So the installation was the result of you taking something you were curious about to the extreme.

You have to have materials and a process to materialize a photo. I find all of it, the production process included, is what makes photography interesting. I'm very aware that I'm just a solitary person involved in the process of materializing photos. That's why I have a security camera in my workroom to record the photo-making process.