The Views of Magic Lantern

The series is composed of landscapes of my hometown and portraits of my family that represent the bonds we share in life. We always have a place where we are tied. We all have a birthplace and I believe there’s a special bond or force there. We feel enveloped and relieved by the force as we stand there. I find that the scenery is not what a traveller sees as a passing sight; it provides a rich energy to those who take a moment to stop and look around. When I visit my hometown few times a year, I take photographs of seasonal scenery within walking distance from home, either by myself or together with my mother and my daughter. Paths I walked on during my childhood days, the shrine where I used to play near, at the top of the hill, and Lake Suwa, a place that can be seen no matter where you stood. Sometimes the figure of my daughter overlaps with myself when I was small. Sometimes the figure of my mother overlaps with Grandmother. When the three of us – my mother, my daughter and myself - stand on the land where we were born, I feel the bond with the soil from ancient days and the sensation of being well protected by the unknown that wraps me. I capture the scenery that comes across my eyes when I feel the sensation. It is as though it’s an image on a lantern that is pale and fragile, and disappears in an instant. They say that we are not necessarily seeing everything clearly in our eyes. I try to set my camera as how people see things naturally to make the viewers feel that they are standing on the same spot and imagine what lies beyond the scenery in the picture. The touch of my works is soft in tonality to make viewers easy to get immersed into the picture. I use a medium format film camera [Rollei flex] and print in the darkroom by myself up to 11X14 inches.　In case of color works, I make adjustments through hand printing to meet my image inside my mind.