shashasha

"When I was in college in the late 1960s, around the time that I first started studying photography seriously, I used to go to a bookstore in Tokyo that specialized in Western books and magazines. I especially liked padding through old issues of National Geographic from the late nineteenth century. There was one issue in particular that fascinated me. It contained pictures of Japan taken by Western photographers in the 1860s. There was a photograph of geisha holding a hand mirror in a room full of traditional Japanese furniture and objects. I looked at the tortoise-shell ornaments in her hair and decorative tobacco box on the floor next to her, thinking about how expensive those then-ordinary items would be now. As I gazed at the picture, I fell into feeling that I was actually there in the room, peering around with fascination. Then I realized photographs were a time machine.

Over the past forty years, taking pictures myself, I have come to consider what impressions they will make when viewed a hundred years from now. Will the images be enjoyed in the same way that I enjoyed the images in National Geographic? Will the objects, locations, and situations be recognizable, or will they be mere abstractions?"

• Mike Nogami