shashasha

When I was in my twenties, there was an avant-garde magazine very popular among university students called Garo. I especially liked the work it contained by a comic artist named Yoshiharu Tsuge. His stories - “Red Flowers” and “Screw Style”, for example - were certainly examples of comic surrealism, but if I have to think of a reason why I liked him, well, I just couldn't get enough of his stuff.

Around that time, I was taking photos that looked just like Tsuge’s drawings. What I mean is, I always took photos of people looking right into my camera. I had come to think that this relationship between the subject tan the camera, looking was the essence of documentary photography.

In 1970, just as he was getting busy preparing my series Sanrizuka, former Asahi Graph writer Norio Osaki was planning on doing a project of some sort with Tsuge. At that time, Tsuge told me that he thought my Sanrizuka photos were interesting, so we decided to begin “Yoshiharu Tsuge’s Wandering Cloud Journey”, a series from the travels the three of us too to be released in Asahi g~Graph Magazine. That’s how it all started

Now after looking at these photos, I’m thinking about going on new solo journeys and retracing out old footsteps and taking pictures. Thinking back on these times we hand when we were young some forty years later, can be bitter sweet, but these were good journey’s we took together.

― Artist statement