"Beijing" is part the project "Away from Home" where I explore the connection between the place and the people of the place as an outsider.
As I continue my another project “My Recollections” in which I am going back to the relationships of my grandmother, mother and me, I started to feel it could be also about life continuing in this place from generations to generations in a macro point of view.
I started this project “Away from Home” as another approach to explore how the lives continue in a place as an outsider. The photographs can never be any explanation of the place but a trace of me walking around the place I don't belong to. My gaze goes to the way the lives happen there in this project.
As for "Beijing", I talked to people on the streets of Beijing to ask if I could make portlaits of them while snapping the street scenes as other series. It took me a little courage to do so as that was not what I usually do, and I've heard that not a few Chinese people have bad feelings toward Japanese. Now I am glad that I did, because communicating with anonymous people there was essential for this series, I think.Ultimately, for me who were going abroad to see what my guidebooks told me to see and to notice myself feeling comfortable by doing so, it also means to re-think what it means for me to travel, or the reason of wishing to go somewhere I don't belong to.
2016 Kochi, Japan.
