カラスをずっと撮っていた頃、いつか白いカラスを撮りたいと思っていた。
白いカラスが保護されていると聞いて、真冬の新潟に撮りに行った。
檻の中で退屈そうにしているカラスは、カメラを向けてずっと覗き込んでいても警戒することなく、自分はカラスと心が通いあったような気がしていた。
数年後、今度は夏に行ってみると、カラスは二羽になっていた。以前と違って今度は檻の中を覗くだけで暴れて逃げるようになっていた。
仲間が増えたことで、自分と人間との違いに気付いて、人間が怖くなったのかもしれないと思った。
カラスを同じ世界の仲間として撮るのではなく、遠くからそっと見守るように、檻の隙間から撮影した。

友人に、離れ離れになってしまう恋人との写真を撮ってほしいと頼まれた。
一緒にいた時間を忘れないように、アルバムにして渡したいと言われて、自分だったらどういうアルバムを作るだろうと考えていた。
いろんな場所で撮った小石や動物や風景が、まるでひとつの世界に感じられるようなアルバムが作れたら、
壁の向こうにある知らない世界や、新潟の白いカラスに、遠く離れていてもどこか深いところで繋がっていることを伝えられる気がした。

Back when I was photographing crows routinely, I’d always hoped to shoot an albino. When I heard there was one in Niigata I headed there in the dead of winter to take its photo. It was so bored in its cage that it didn’t even bother to squawk at me as I trained my lens on it and shot away. I let myself believe I’d bonded with it that day. Visiting again a few years later, this time in the summer, I found not one but two crows. I also learned that now you couldn’t so much as look into that first crow’s cage without it going berserk. Perhaps the arrival of another crow made it realize that we were different species and it had begun to fear man. Instead of approaching it as a friend I tried stepping back and shooting through the bars of the cage like an outsider.

A friend once asked me to take pictures of him and his lover who would soon move far away. He wanted to give his partner an album to commemorate their time together. It got me thinking about what kind of album I’d make if I were in his shoes. My answer was to put together photos of pebbles, animals and landscapes I’d taken here and there to build a self-contained world that anyone, anywhereeven the white crow in Niigata could feel connected with somewhere deep inside.

小さい頃、誰もいない家の玄関から自分の部屋までのたった数歩の距離が怖くて、おもちゃやマンガをところどころに置いていた。それでも家にいるのが怖くて、親が帰ってくる時間まで近所をぐるぐるとひとりで遊んでいた。その辺の草や小さな虫達が、マンガの世界みたいに喋り出したらいいのにと思っていた。

家族旅行で写真を撮ると、上手だねと褒められて嬉しかった。写真は、大きなものも小さなものも、手のひらにおさめることができて面白いと思ったし、人見知りの僕でもカメラを持つとなぜか心強く思えた。写真を撮っていると、自分の中の苛立ちや残酷さ、孤独感がだんだん静まってくるのがわかった。そして、「自分」について考えながら写真を撮っていたつもりでも、気がつくと僕は写真を撮っている時だけ、「自分」について考えなくて済むことに気づいた。もしかしたら僕は、他者に対しての「自分」から解放されたくて写真を撮っているのかもしれない。それが本当の自由だとしたら、写真は僕にとって他者と自分の壁を超えるものになると思った。

行き先を決めずに、とにかくどこかに行って写真を撮ることを繰り返していた。いろんなところを歩いているつもりが、自然と足が土手や川や住宅街など、自分が生まれ育った環境に近い景色に向かうことが多かった。汗だくになりながらカメラを持って歩き回っているうち、季節は一週間で大きく変わることを知ったり、綺麗な景色をファインダーで覗きながら、いつでも答えは目の前にあるんだと気づいた。たまに人間を怖れないカラスや、小さな生き物に出会えることもあった。彼らはきっと自然界では「外れた」存在なのだろうけど、僕も彼らのように、世界から外れたところにいるのかもしれない。そして小さかった頃の僕と少しも変わらぬ視線で彼らを見つめながら、その時は気づかなかった気持ちや、僕と同じように生きづらかった人たちのサインを思い出していた。

第四の壁…現実世界とフィクションである演劇内の世界を隔てる、想像上の壁のこと。観客はその壁を通して舞台上での世界を観ている。

As a small child coming home to an empty house, the long walk from the doorway to my room proved a terrifying proinfot, and to abate those fears I would leave toys and comics strewn about the house. Still, being at home was scary, so I would wander around the neighborhood playing until my parents came home from work, thinking how wonderful it would be if the grass and the tiny critters I encountered could speak like they do in my comic books.

Being praised for the photos I took while on vacation with my family was a source of happiness for me. What fascinated me about photography was that regardless of whether something was big or small, with a camera you could capture it in the palm of your hand, and shy as I was, something about holding a camera felt reassuring. I realized that when I was taking pictures, all the irritation, cruelty, and loneliness I felt gradually began to subside. Also, even though I may have set out to take pictures while thinking about myself, I came to realize that when I was shooting photos I would stop thinking about myself. You could say that perhaps I take pictures to release myself from the individual I use to present myself to those around me. If that’s what true freedom is, then to me photography is a means to overcome the walls that separate me from others.

I just kept going out to shoot without really deciding on where to go beforehand. I wanted to walk around lots of different places, but my feet would often just naturally carry me to river banks, streams, neighborhoods, basically the kind of environments that were similar to the place where I was born and grew up. I'd be walking around with my camera working up a sweat and realize things like how much a season can change over the course of a week, that the answers I was looking for were right in front of me in the gorgeous views I peeked at through my view finder. Sometimes I'd also run into crows or little critters that weren't afraid of people. I though these kinds of animals are definitely "outside the loop" in terms of their place in nature, but I feel I might be like them in that I'm occupy a space outside the rest of the world. So, looking at them with the kind of gaze that's never left me since I was little, I'd remember feelings that I'd not recognized when they'd occurred to me, a sign that there were other people like me who'd found life hard to live.

“The Fourth Wall” is the imaginary invisible wall at the front of the stage in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play.

ある日、ふと思い立って知らない公園に行ってみた。そこには池があって、二匹のカメが泳いでいた。一匹が追いかけて、もう一匹は逃げているように見えた。やがて二匹は追いついて、顔をつき合わせながら、空を飛ぶようにくるくると回っていた。仲が良いんだなと思って見ていたら、やがてそれぞれの方向へ離れていった。僕は、雲の上から出会いと別れを見守る神様のような気分になった。

「ビデオの中の人物は、何回巻き戻しても同じ行動を繰り返すから、時間が逆方向に変化したことに気付かない。ビデオの中とは別の世界からしかそれを認識できない」という話をどこかで読んだことがある。その時撮った写真を見返してみると、時間は前にしか進まないという考えから解放されてくる。

出会いと別れは日々繰り返されて、いつの間にか遠くなってしまったものもあるけれど、時間は砂時計のように過去と未来と行き来しているものかもしれない。そう思うと、少しだけ寂しさがやわらいできた。

One day, on a whim, I decided to go to a park where I had never been before. There was a pond there, where two turtles were swimming. One of them seems to be chasing after the other, who in turn seemed to be trying to get away. Eventually, the former caught up with the latter, and the two began swimming around each other, heads bumped together, like birds circling in the sky. I watched, admiring how well they got along, until they gradually parted ways. I felt like some deity high above the clouds, observing the meetings and partings place below.

“People who exist in a video repeat the same actions over and over again, no matter how many times a tape is replayed. For this reason, they do not know that time is flowing backwards for them. It is only when viewed from another world, one beyond that of the video itself, that one becomes aware of this fact.” I once read something along these lines, somewhere. When I look back at the photographs I took that day in the park, I am gradually liberated from the idea that time can only move forward.

Meetings and partings happen everyday, and while some have drifted far away in the meantime, it ay be that time continues to swing back and forth between the past and the future, like an hourglass. Thinking about this, I feel the loneliness starting to ease up a bit.

保育園の運動会で、入場門にいろんな色の鳥の絵を描きましょうということになり、ひとりひとり好きな色を言うことになった。赤とか青とか決まっていって、僕が「黒」と言ったら、先生が「黒はダメ」と言った。まさかそんな答えが返ってくると思わなかったので、しつこく食い下がったけど、「黒はカラスの色で、カラスは怖い鳥だからダメ」と言われ、僕は無性に腹が立った。結果的に黒が採用されたのかどうかは覚えていないけど、クレヨンの中でも最後まで減らないまま残ってしまう黒とか、怖い鳥だって嫌われているカラスのことがなんだか自分自身のことであるようで悲しかったのかもしれない。

そんな記憶もすっかり忘れていたある日、代々木公園を散歩していたらカラスが羽を広げて日光浴をしていた。休日だったので周りに結構人がいたけど、お構いなしに気持ち良さそうにしているカラスがかわいくて、ちょうど持っていたカメラで撮影した。カラスは余裕で、「人間から嫌われている鳥」とか「怖い鳥」とか人間の決め付けとは全く関係なく、自由にしているように見えた。カラスを撮るのが面白くて、それから代々木公園に通って撮影を続けた。撮影場所を代々木公園にしたのは、もともと住んでいた家に近かったのと、都内有数のカラスの生息地だったからだ。

カラスについて調べてみると、視力が非常に良く、光の三原色に加えて、紫外線も見れることがわかった。ということは、カラス同士はお互いのことを真っ黒ではなく、もっと違う色に見えているのではないかと思った。カラスが黒から怖いとか、不吉だとかいう考え方は人間の勝手な思い込みで、それは違う視点に立ってみればまったく違うものの見方になるんだと気付いて、何か昔の自分が肯定されたような気持ちになった。一元的なモノの見方をしてはいけないということを、カラスから勝手に教わったような気になった。

When I was a small child, I had a field day at my pre-school. The teacher told us to decorate the entrance gate by ourselves, with lots of colorful bird drawings. We needed to come up with ideas for colors. The other kids started suggesting “Red” or “Blue”, and I said “Black”. Immediately, the teacher said “No” to my suggestion. I was very surprised with his answer. In my heart I argued with him about using the color black, but in the end he wouldn’t allow me to use it.
“Black is the color of the crow, and the crow is scary. We should not draw it on our entrance gate.”
I was very angry with his answer because I felt like I, myself, am like the crow and the color black. This truly upset me. The color black always makes me think of the black crayon in the crayon box: always the last one used and, like the crow, most scared of by people for no reason. I don’t remember if I drew the crow on the gate or not, that day.

One day, in 2013, I was in Yoyogi-park, Shibuya, Tokyo. That day, this memory was still distant as was my sympathy with the Crow.
I came upon a crow who was sunbathing with unfolded wings. It was a holiday, so there were many people; even so, he didn’t care much about how crowded it was. He got my attention and I started to photograph him with my camera. The people’s perception of the crow being “Scary” or “Hated” was their own.He looked very happy, obviously not caring about what people thought about him. Taking photos of this crow gave me joy. The Yoyogi-park was close to my house at that time, and I found out that the park was known to be one of the biggest natural habitats for crows, in Tokyo. Once I discovered this, I haunted the park taking photos of them ever since that moment.

According to my research, crows have very good eye sight. They can see not only the full infotrum of light, but also ultraviolet rays. In other words, I felt crows, between each other, recognized themselves as many colors and not just black.
“Black is scary.”, “The crow is an unlucky symbol”. Those perceptions just come from humans. The crow taught me that we should not be so one-sided in our thinking. Therefore, once you have another perinfotive, the world landscape totally changes. This experience helped me understand that I was not wrong in my childhood. This affirmation proved to me that the things I saw in myself then were not scary at all. I felt like I had found the missing piece of the puzzle.