2O14 [ni-oh-ichi-yon]

Inspiration for this work came from a particular scene from the Haruki Murakami novel IQ84 (ichi-kew-hachi-yon). In the scene, Tengo, the protagonist, is sitting on a slide in a children's park at night looking up at two moons in the sky, when Aomame, the heroine, notices him from the balcony of the apartment where she is hiding. This is an important scene that symbolizes the structure of the novel which goes back and forth between this side and that side, the real world and another world. There is no need however to connect 2O14 [ni-ou-ichi-yon] with Murakami's IQ84. Everyone has certainly stood in a park at night once or twice, illuminated by mercury lamps. The park, which was crowded during the day with cheering children and people resting on benches or walking their dogs, is quiet now. The slides and swings have lost their original purpose and become oddly shaped objects, while the concrete animals that the children played on seem to come to life and start moving. In other words, a park at night is a place where the appearance of another world, completely different from the daytime, is clearly revealed. Ichikawa must have realized this and aimed to depict the metamorphosis of everyday space-time into something else. To that end, techniques unique to photography, such as long exposures and infrared film, which substantially transform how the real world is perceived, are of great significance. In a sense, the medium of expression itself, i.e., photography, could be said to play the role of a door that opens to another world.