OPINION/COMMENTARY
Opinion No.3
Regard (視線）
.JPG)
There is a work named "Regard" in my photobook "Paris of that winter".
I will talk about a certain short film.
The main charcter thinks that in order to avoid being exposed to the eyes of other people, he will return to his big mansion and shut himself up in his room.
Because the main character is worried about the eyes of the servant watching him when the servant brings his tea break, he discharges her.
Because he worries about his eyes when a friend visits, he tells his friend to leave.
He worried about the eyes of the announcer when he turns on the television and removes the television.
He worried about the eyes in a portrait and removes it.
The main character removes every "eye" that he sees in this way.
Finally, he is deserted at last and sits down in a chair in his empty room.
"Now I can relax at last" he thought, but then he noticed something behind him.
When he looked back, what was it he saw?
Here is the climactic scene of this movie.
In a movie, a camera turns around slowly and what was in the screen?
The camera revealed the main character looking at himself. He was looking in a mirror and watched his own figure, his own face, and his own eyes.
"Even if a person isolates himself from the eyes of others, he cannot rid himself of his own eyes."
This is the claim of this movie.
Whose eyes does the person who watched my work Regard (eyes) feel?
The eyes of another person staring at himself?
Their own eys watching themselves?
Opinion No.2
[ Art & Image ]
Recently, I read a book titled “Aesthetic Outline” by Koichi Iwaki. Despite its stiff square book appearance, I was most impress with one of the subject matter that he raised: what is considered image? After I finished the book, I found myself sharing the same thought as the author when it comes to this subject matter. I would like to introduce and summarize it below.
What is image?
An image equates to a form that sensuously provokes the mind, appealing to the consciousness after it is received visually and essentially awakens the ocular senses. We are unable to escape from this kind of image; all the while, it exerts itself as if attacking us. A memory from one’s youth of falling in love, for instance a facial expression made by a beloved, will surface as an image in a sequence as it occurs. And when he loses the love, he tries to forget such an image because of the associated sorrow that it brings. However, this image will undergo changes in the mind’s recollection like a revolving lantern. The image is stored in our consciousness as it would in a storage device, arranging in sequence, and then flashes like data onto the screen immediately surrounding our conscious thought when it is invoked. The mind allows us to explore the image and emerge in it as it appears in our consciousness.
Human beings originally possess a function of sensitivity to express an image through an instinctive function. However, from childhood, we are taught to look at an object or matter and answer the question “what is this?” to validate the education we receive. Through this process we develop a careless feel for a material and give the form a name, memorized as words. From this experience, we have arranged a collection of data image in our mind, each with an associated word. Eventually, from habit, we all avoid the function of the sensitivity that we have and use words to express our experience.
Still, there is a part inside all of us that is like a small mesh net that cannot sum up an image through words alone but can only be felt by a function of the sensitivity. There are times when people converse with one another and during the exchange, a person struggles with moments of “What should I say? What is that feeling I feel?” In this instant, what we experience cannot be reconciled by the words that we have collected in our minds.
The thing which expresses an image is art. What is considered good art, as the author asserts, is when the image in one’s work counterbalances itself with words to describe what is seen and with feeling from a function of sensitivity that cannot be described by words. A person who appreciates and takes in the component to feel only by the function of sensitivity, can truly delve into the world of the image. As for me, the part which cannot be expressed by words in the picture I compensate by adding form in the background, feeling the material, feeling the surface touch of that material. And from this, artistry emerges.
Opinion No.1
[ Interview ]
One day, a newshen from a newspaper publishing company asked me "Why do you take photographs?"
From which I replied "It is proof that I lived because I know with certainty, I was on the other side of the lens."