shashasha

In 2015 I suffered from septicemia. I was affected by Streptococcus pyogenes, known as flesh-eating bacteria. The CRP, a value of extent of inflammation, reached to 40mg/dl (the standard is under 0.3mg/dl). There is no remedy of those who have the value of more than 40, and I was told later that I could have died anytime.

For the last few years, I have been attacked by a series of diseases. It is as if many of long-standing evils inside me have awakened and rampaged.

A man is destined to die, and no one can forecast what thoughts come in his/her mind on the brink of death.

In the only official comment Stanley Kubrick made for Eyes Wide Shut, his last movie that he regards as his best in his works, there is the following words: “I treated the delusions and dreams that never came true as important a the realities”. That is what I regard as real.

The past can change freely. Is the scenery I saw a little while ago reality, or an illusion? Did that man surely make a smile or just curl his lips? What is doubtlessly left with the time quickly passing is unexpectedly scarce. This fact tells us that what makes life is nothing more than subjective illusions. So it does not matter whether what you have in your hand would be a reality or an illusion when you are ready to depart.

Suddenly is the recent works which I carefully reviewed and selected in a hospital room in the course of recovering.

All the people, not just photographers, should remember the moment when they were suddenly moved at seeing one of the familiar scenes. This is an experience that Giorgio de Chirico encountered at the plaza of Florence. He wrote in his book, “The scene I was familiar with suddenly become the one that I have never seen before. Soon its familiar appearance was beginning to bear a full of mysteries” (“Magical Realism”, TANEMURA Suehiro, Parco Publishing, 1988). At the age of 76, I have realized for the first time that just this moment is my life and my photograph.