腔/Inner

Once upon a time in my life, my whole world had been turned over just in front of me.
Gradually colors had been diminished from my sight, and finally, I became total color blindness. My entire world was turned into black and white.
This symptom was due to my psychological problems.
After the incident, I had literally lost entire colors from my everyday life. All I could see were black and white wherever I went. That was like living in the series of monochrome negatives.
At that time, my life was lead by anxiety and fear.
I could not share what I had been seeing with anyone, anymore. I was the only one who was misplaced under the world of black and white. The thought, the new concept of loneliness, made me insanely scared.
I was lonely. I could not connect to anyone. I was alone in the universe, even though there was plenty of the same kind, -people-, around me.
At the same time, I felt like I was losing control of my own body.


That is why I had to come up with the way to make sure “my presence”.
But how? How can I prove the state of “my presence”?
How can I fit “myself” into such a colorless world?


I thought and thought, day and night. And finally I have reached something to give myself an answer. The answer was my first project, the series of black and white photography, titled "腔" (Inner).


Until then, I hated to take a picture or to have my picture taken. Interestingly, I had no desire to hold a camera in my hand.
However, by living in the colorless world, I had a strange premonition that photography would be the only way to express myself. So, the project “Inner” came in, as I predicted.
When I was developing the films for the first time, I amazed that my inner scenery (which should not exist outside of me) was coming out as a form of photography (which everyone can recognize). I was relived.
It may sound exaggerated, but honestly, I screamed in my heart “The scenery I have been seeing is right here in these pictures!”
In the real life I can not share what I saw, what I had been seeing. But my world, my scenery, was right here in these pictures. They proved me. I had been in here, and I would be.
I was relived by my own discovery.


Since then, I have been taking a black and white photography.
Right now, Color has been returned to my sight, little by little.
Now, the life with my daughter is colorful and flourished.
But sometime, I burst into the feeling that I will be losing a connection to the world around me again.　This feeling of confusion strikes me so violently.
When I feel lost, I try to reassure myself by recreating the world around me through photography.