Ishiuchi Miyako
[Photographer, b. 1947, Gunma Prefecture, Japan, lives in Tokyo.]
I cannot stop [taking photographs of scars] because they are so much like a photograph… They are visible events, recorded in the past. Both the scars and the photographs are the manifestation of sorrow for the many things which cannot be retrieved...
The natural choice is to photograph what you like. I chose what I hated.
I failed a lot. Failing is so important. It’s been such a plus for me, never having been taught photography.
I am not photographing the past, I am taking the present moment, the time of the now, when these remnants are here, together with me.
…I have always thought that the darkroom is such a sexual place. Its smell is so strong. And if you do it with bare hands, it’s like you’re having sex. Photography has that quality; it engages the five senses. It possesses something like sexuality.
I can’t photograph the past. I can only photograph what happens in the moment I encounter this particular object, my most personal reactions, what I feel and see.
(On photographing the clothing of Hiroshima atomic bomb victims)
I’ve started to think lately that perhaps I really am suited to photography. That’s the potential of photography: to be freer and freer, to do things with ever more freedom.
It’s very difficult for me to take pictures from the perspective of the viewer. I can only be the one providing the photographs.
