December 8, 2022 from “HOW MANY DAYS?”

　From the work “HOW MANY DAYS? (2023)”. The quarantine caused by the pandemic had kept me away from meeting people face-to-face, but at the end of 2022, when that period seemed to have ended, I met an old acquaintance for the first time in a long time and took this photo on my way home. I heard about the last days of the dog she had owned when passed away. She said that the dog did not suffer for a long time and died gracefully. As I had never owned a dog before, my only experience was that I temporarily took care of her dog.

　As you can see in this work, there are several photographs in “HOW MANY DAYS?” using multiple exposures, a technique I began using in “SAME TIME NEXT YEAR” (2019), mainly because it allowed me to stack two moments together and escape from the decisive moment. At the time, the main reason was to “surprise me with my photos,” as multiple exposures with an automatic film camera produced unpredictable photos. On the other hand, in this work, I use a digital camera to check the overlap of the images. The overlapping of images at the same place and at the same time is similar to the feeling of painting an abstract picture, like drawing something in the sky, for me. Sentimentally recalling the dog, I photographed the chaotic, wildly beautiful potted flowers as an expression of mourning.