Photography and what I value in everyday life

My father had a camera at home, so cameras were fairly familiar to me since childhood, but I started taking photographs seriously in high school. I saw a retrospective exhibition of Ikko Narahara at a local museum, and the presence of his black-and-white photos truly captivated me. I was shocked that photography could move people's emotions so deeply.

A big appeal of photography is that "anyone can take photos," and I think that's one reason why I've been able to enjoy it for so long. Having started photography in high school, as I grew up, communication on social media became increasingly image-centric, and I think that trend also contributed to my immersion in photography. The fact that anyone can take photos and anyone can participate—the current state of photography and its surrounding environment—is also interesting.

In that way, photography is something anyone can do if they set their mind to it. However, at the same time, there are many elements that cannot be controlled, and I believe it is a medium heavily dependent on external circumstances. I enjoy the unexpected things that happen in front of me and the aspects that don't go as I planned. Something that comes from outside by chance. I want to enjoy how I change as a result of that. When I create works, I have two main approaches: some works are completed purely with personal elements like fetishes and aesthetics, while others incorporate these elements but also mechanically use random numbers, auto-generation, and programming to perform editing actions, treating the uncontrollable environmental elements during shooting as "others" with randomness. In such works, I mechanically edit things, then actively manipulate them again, or incorporate randomness again, looping subjectivity and objectivity within the structure of a single work. I feel that the "otherness" of such a process is somewhat similar to the physical act of shooting in photography.

In my daily life, I wake up in the morning, go to a shoot if there is one, run errands outside, and in between, I watch movies or go to exhibitions. I don't have a fixed routine, but when I carry my camera, I narrow my vision to a very small area, observing what happens in a relatively confined world that people usually don't pay attention to. I might be looking at things from that perspective. Also, whether I'm creating personal works or client work, I prioritize incorporating new things little by little rather than doing the same thing for a long time without getting bored, and I try to enjoy the changes in perception and thought that result from that.