The birthplace of the first daily newspaper in Japan (Yokohama, Japan) Monument to the Conquerors of Space (Moscow, Russia) The memorial to the civilian victims of the Japanese occupation, the Civilian War Memorial (Singapore)
The birthplace of the first railway in Japan (Yokohama, Japan) Location of the first modern tree-lined street in Japan (Yokohama, Japan) The site where the Japan-America treaty of amity and friendship was concluded (Yokohama, Japan) The birthplace of the Gas Station in Japan (Yokohama, Japan) The first brewery in Japan (Yokohama, Japan) The birthplace of gas business in Japan Yokohama, Japan) A monument of the area where the tsunami hit (Ishinomaki, Japan) A monument of prayer for restoration from the Great East Japan Earthquake (Ishinomaki, Japan) “please make me the last man who died from Atomic or Hydrogen bomb” (Tokyo, Japan) Declaration of a peace-loving city (Tokyo, Japan) A monument of 2600th anniversary celebrations of the Empire of Japan (Yokohama, Japan) Site of Empress Shoken’s funeral hall (Tokyo, Japan) A honor of national prestige of Japan (Yokosuka, Japan) A monument of war horses in the Manchurian Incident (Sendai, Japan) E=mc2 (Hiroshima, Japan) “This is our cry, this is our prayer: for building peace in the world”. (Hiroshima, Japan) A monument of class-A war criminals (Tokyo, Japan) The birthplace of The movement against nuclear weapons (Tokyo, Japan) Punggol Beach Massacre (Singapore) Changi Beach Massacre (Singapore) JAS-minnet (Stockholm Sweden) Memorial International Brigades (Stockholm Sweden) Monument to Selfishness (Helsinki Finland) A monument of Tama river collapse (Tokyo, Japan)
Yokohama, the city in which I live, is home to a great many monuments. They are not particularly imposing, but they will tell you about an object or event that once occupied their space, claiming: “That-has-been”. These monuments tell a local history and are a source of municipal pride.
But should you read their inscriptions, you will find that Yokohama has been the birthplace of a multitude of similarly described newspapers and parks, the identities of which struggle to make themselves known. Read “Japan’s First” here and “First Japanese” there. With a slight change of phrase, Yokohama’s monuments claim various origins.
It is at this point that editing becomes clear. It accompanies the visualization of invisible history as record. Nobody can directly perceive history, which perhaps explains why historical facts get displayed when they are convenient or why people can have different claims about a shared past. The relationship between editing and historical record that is found in monuments is analogous to that which is found in the medium of photography, and both seem to be correlated. Photographs tend to be thought of as recording apparatuses that directly visualize their objects as indexical signs. And yet without captions, it becomes difficult to determine their subject. And when photographs are manipulated or presented arbitrarily, the editing that comes with their recording becomes strikingly evident.
“Retouch” is a series that presents photographs of various monuments as objects of this visualized history and omits their retouched inscriptions. Through recording monuments and the editing process, I aim to take the history of humanity as recording and editing and fix it in images.
私の暮らす横浜の街には無数のモニュメントが建ち並んでいます。それらはそれほど目立つ大きさではありませんが、以前この場所に存在した物や、ここで起こった出来事など「それは・かつて・あった」ことを示しており、土地の歴史を想像させ、同時に市民として誇りを感じさせてくれます。しかし、それらモニュメントの碑文を見ると、同じ街の中にもかかわらず、少しだけ文言の異なる複数の新聞発祥の地や公園発祥の地が存在するなど、矛盾しながらそれぞれアイデンティティを主張している状況があることがわかります。日本初、日本人初など、微細に文言を変えながら、確かにそれぞれ発祥を示しています。
そこから、「歴史」という不可視のものを「記録」として可視化する際に伴う「編集」の存在が見えてきます。自らに都合がいい史実だけを取り出したり、あるいは当事者同士が異なる主張をすることがあるのも、誰も歴史を直接知覚できないからではないでしょうか。そのような歴史の記録と編集の関係は、「写真」というメディアの性質に類似し、また両者は相関関係にあるように思われます。インデックス的な記号として、対象を直接可視化し記録する装置と思われがちな「写真」は、同時にキャプションがないと被写体が何であるか判別できなかったり、画像加工が施されたり、あるいは恣意的な演出されたりと、記録に伴う編集が顕著に現れます。
シリーズ「Retouch」は、そのような歴史を可視化したものとしての様々なモニュメントを撮影し、レタッチ−碑文を削除したものです。モニュメントを記録し編集するプロセスを通して、記録としての人類の歴史と、編集としての人類の歴史をイメージに定着させることを試みています。
Athens Photo Festival 2017 Main Exhibition (group exhibition) Athens Photo Festival 2017 Main Exhibition (group exhibition) TOKYO FRONTLINE PHOTO AWARD NEW VISIONS #2 (group exhibition) TOKYO FRONTLINE PHOTO AWARD NEW VISIONS #2 (group exhibition)