Here. Still. (Unmoored) 静寂はここに

Here.Still. in the age of Covid-19

Long before the sense of isolation that comes from self-quarantining became a common feeling to millions of people across the globe, I was making photographs that speak to the experience of being confined to an interior space, but looking out on the world beyond the window with longing.

The impetus for me to start this project was my sense of disconnection from life itself, as though I were walking through a film only I wasn’t part of it. When I was nineteen and in university in Vancouver, Canada my father suddenly passed away. Picking up the pieces, upon graduation I departed for Tokyo to embark on a career in Finance.

A dozen years later in 2014 I found myself in another difficult situation. My career had taken me to New York, where it had reached a dead-end. I was　burned out from the stresses of work, and had come out of a long-term relationship. I gave up the lease on my loft, put all my things in storage
and looked ahead to a completely uncertain future. The twelve years that I had spent in Finance made me feel disconnected from the world and I realized that I had never reconciled with the direction of my life after my father’s death. I set out on the road, with just a backpack and suitcase, unsure where my path would take me.

Through a series of events, I wound up in the Southwest United States to pursue a long dormant passion I had: photography. I found an old photograph that I had made in a hotel room at Lake Louise in Canada in 2009. I remembered being there, alone in that room and looking out at the late summer twilight and the turquoise lake beyond the window. I felt transported back to that place and time, but simultaneously I missed my father as Banff was a place that he had taken my family to on numerous occasions when I was a child. I reflected on this sense of disconnection, isolation, and longing that I felt, and a series: Here. Still. (aka Unmoored) was born.

I continued my journeys well into 2017, and as I did, I made photographs where I felt the presence of humanity inside a space, and the stillness of life unfolding beyond the window: visible, even tangible, but inaccessible, as if on a screen in an empty theatre. I recalled my childhood growing up in the organized chaos that is Tokyo, looking out on the enormous city from by bedroom window, even then feeling disconnected from the bustling people below.

There is a word in Japanese, nukumori, a lukewarmness that can refer to the presence of someone who occupied a place but had departed: an empty chair, a tea cup, a potter’s work table, the inside of a bus or train car, and of course, the many hotels and motels where I found myself. Nothing in the series is staged, everything is just as I found it in real life.

My odyssey eventually lasted 990 days, culminating with a return back to Tokyo, my birthplace. But I carried that feeling of isolation and longing with me even as I found a place to finally put down roots.

Now, as many of us find ourselves similarly in isolation, disconnected from the world outside and from our loved ones, I want to share this series as a
beacon of hope for all who feel alone. Alone can be beautiful, and it does not need to be sad. There is a warmth in the stillness we find there; embrace this time,
for soon we will be back out in the world again.

大都会東京の喧噪の中で育った私にとって、寝室の窓は心安らぐ場所であった。その窓は目まぐるしい世の中と、それを遮断してくれる両面を映し出すレンズでもあった。
父が亡くなったあと、私は心の中で鐘が鳴るのを聞いた事があった。
それはこの世の中と心の奥底の記憶とが再び繋がりを持つよう努力してみる旅へといざなうものだったのだ。その存在が見えなく、気配のみをそこに感ずるような、そんな静寂さの中にも我々の記憶があると言う事を、その窓を通して見たのだった。