shashasha

Osamu Wataya's Juvenile documents the lives of a group of children which he befriended in a small village in Ukraine in 2007. Wataya journeyed back two times since his initial meeting to complete the project. The images present the dynamics between that of an adult and a child. The photographer is present and allowed into the realms of the children's lives, not as a stranger and neither as a friend. Instead Wataya is allowed to engage within the world of the children photographed within an in-between space where he neither poses as an authoratorive figure or as an adult but more so as a viewer, as if kindly and casually invited by the group to engage along the peripheries of entire acceptance. The resulting images are viceral and striking, presenting the viewer the comming of age and awakenings of the children, attempting to engage with their future adultworld and concepts of adulthood already known to them.

Included within the publication is an essay written by the Shino Kuraishi entitled 'Children of the Outsdie' including its English translation.