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...
I failed a lot. Failing is so important. It’s been such a plus for me, never having been taught photography.
The natural choice is to photograph what you like. I chose what I hated.
…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 am not photographing the past, I am taking the present moment, the time of the now, when these remnants are here, together with me.
One must be a bit cold to be the one taking photos.
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.
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)
