Shutter Released

I was pleased to give the participants in my project a chance to take an unusual self-portrait. It is very simple. My idea was that by the subjects holding a shutter release cable and taking their own pictures, the subjects would have autonomy and an authorship of their images that supersede the photographer. In other words, this would strengthen the photography's essential feature, the power of assuring the referent's existence. It would also affect an impression that they have when they will look back at those photographs in their futures. This project is based on the Great East Japan Earthquake 2011 as well. Unfortunately, there were many victims of the earthquake who lost their photographs taken over the previous ten years because they were only kept digitally. Although most of the photographs in their digital devices disappeared, many physical photographs such as prints and films were saved. Since I heard this story, these photographs of my "Shutter Released" project were made using slide film. I will eventually give these slides to the people in the photographs, so they can keep their photographs physically. This idea is very simple but I have hardly seen this style of shooting so far. It is simply because that most of photographers do not want to give away their control of releasing a shutter and slide films. But I didn't. As working as a photographer, I had often thought "Why do I need to release a shutter every time? Being born as a son of the fourth generation of my family-business photo studio must have affected on this decision. In my childhood, photographs had been always for people, not for a photographer. Why not releasing your shutter for them?