2012 GRAND PRIZE WINNER
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I Used to be You

photographs and text by
Kyoko Hamada

If I met Kikuchiyo-san, I might just smile at her and be quiet for a while. She probably wouldn't say much either; she might just nod and smile if I spoke about anything at all. Or, she might ask me to sit with her on a park bench and we would look at the sunset in the quiet stillness.

Kikuchiyo-san is a fictional character. Rather than being in my comfort zone behind the camera, I am the subject facing the lens. The back and forth of Kikuchiyo-san being in her own home and out in the world and the still-lifes which are interspersed throughout bring to mind my tendency to ponder things that are right in front of me, as well as things I will never understand.

When I first tried on her gray wig, the latex make-up, and her clothes, I gazed at the mirror for a long time. My initial reaction was to chuckle, but I started feeling a little uneasy soon after. The wrinkled face staring back at me resembled my own with thirty-plus years added to it. When I smiled, she smiled back at me. When I pouted, she pouted too. It was the first time I had met her, but she was simultaneously someone I already knew quite well and someone I knew nothing about.

Unlike the feeling evoked by the painting in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, looking at Kikuchiyo-san in the mirror caused me to feel a mixture of humility, humor and a sense of tender familiarity.

I'm not sure when my interest in aging started, though I can think of several reasons why it is now on my mind. Small losses like my favorite corner cafe being replaced by a chain drug store, and finding the first few strands of gray in my hair. Or, bigger losses like death of my father and the disaster in Japan a year ago in March. In June, Kikuchiyo-san will have been with me through four seasons; a reminder that time and life are always moving.

I have gotten used to dressing up as Kikuchiyo-san because it has been a year since I started photographing her. But I still feel uneasy imagining the one sentence Kikuchiyo-san could utter to me if I met her in a crowded train station or during a walk in the park: I used to be you.

— Kyoko Hamada