I was today years old when I found out about Yoshitomo Nara’s photography work and I think it speaks so much about how he intended this part of this practice to be. I can’t help but resonate with how he approaches taking photos (as a way to sharpen his sensibilities) and the synchronicity of my rekindled frustration to practice it more this year too. As a way to simply record the days that go by and people in my life, but to also have something to look back on that won’t get lost in cameraroll purgatory.
An exercept from an exhibit at Taka Ishii Gallery:
“When I graduated university, and started to think that I was going to keep painting, When I moved by myself to Germany and felt kind of lonely, When I felt like I had become all alone,
I had that old familiar camera in my hands again. I had that camera I got in middle school in my hands again.(…) Being alone is what makes me pick up my camera.”
Yoshitomo Nara, 2017
Excerpted from the artist statement written for the exhibition “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”
From Yoshitomo Nara’s “Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone—Take your time, it won’t be long now”