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Munemasa Takahashi Close

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糸をつむぐ
Spinning a Yarn

海沿いを走る車の中で「水に浮くもの」を撮ったらいいと友人は言った。
それは具体的に何を撮ればいいのか彼に聞いたのだけど、なんとなく思いついただけ、とのことだった。
「そのうち撮ってみようかな」と僕は答えた。

2011年、僕は山元町という小さな町で、津波に流された写真を洗浄して返却するボランティアに関わっていた。
そこには本当にたくさんの家族写真があった。旅行の思い出だったり、婚礼写真だったり、子供の成長記録だった。
約75万枚の写真にはそれぞれの記憶があったはずだ。それらの写真は、水の中でゆっくりとバクテリアに侵食されていた。

彼とはそのボランティアをきっかけに知り合った。
津波の大きな被害にあった町で生まれ育った彼の言う「水に浮くもの」という言葉は、多くのものを想像させた。

その後も活動は続き、約45万枚が持ち主の元に返った。
同時にダメージが酷く、処分されてしまいそうな写真も多くあった。
僕と彼はLost & Found projectを立ち上げ、そういった行き場のない写真を被災地に来れない人たちに見てもらう活動を始めた。

一緒に展示をしようと声をかけてもらい、様々な国の色々な場所に行くことになった。
国籍や性別や世代に関わらず展示された写真を見る人は、
ダメージによって失われたイメージを自分の記憶で補完しながら写真と向き合っているようだった。
その間も「水に浮くもの」が頭の片隅にはあったけれど、何を撮ればいいのか思いつかず手を付けられずにいた。
それから1年ほどして、彼は死んでしまった。
そんなおかしいことはないと思った。そしてしばらくその約束は忘れていた。

そこからまた何年か経ったある日、知人の安産祈願に山の上にある神社にお参りに行くことにした。
少し冷たい空気の中、階段をずっと登った山門の脇に大きな水瓶があり、表面張力のギリギリまで透明な水で満たされていた。
そこには賽銭が投げられていて、多くは水の底に青く見え、何枚かのコインは水面に浮いて銀色に光っていた。
その水面の光を見たとき、撮るタイミングが来たんだということがわかった。

「水に浮くもの」とは結局なんだろうか、と考えながら被写体を探してきた。
そうしているうちに結婚をすることになり、1年くらいすると子供が生まれた。
震災の時たくさん洗ったような家族写真を、今度は自分が撮ることになった。
結婚、出産、子育て。
新しい写真が加わるたびに、今まで撮ったものとくっついて全体の意味合いを少しずつ変えていった。

写真はいくつかの時間を跨いでいく、その中で忘れられたり思い出されたりしていく。
振り返るたび、繋がったり途切れたりして、物語が紡がれていく。

「水に浮くもの」をいつか撮ってみるよと答えたときには、まさか巡り巡って自分の子供を撮ることにつながっていくとは思いもしなかった。
そして今では8年前の彼の言葉も、これまでと違った意味で聞こえてくる。

In a car running along the coast, a friend suggested that I take photos of “things that float on water.”
Then I asked him what exactly the subjects would be, and his answer was it was just a random idea he came up with. I replied, “Maybe I will give it a try sometime.”

In 2011, in a small town called Yamamotocho, I began engaging in a volunteer activity to cleanse photographs that had been swept up by the tsunami and to return them to related people. They included really many family photographs: recollection of travels, wedding photos, documentation of children’s growths, and so on. Each of the approximately 750,000 prints must have been linked to a particular memory. Under water, such images were slowly eroded by bacteria.

It was through this volunteer work that I met him. The phrase “things that float on water,” uttered by someone like him, having grown up in a town disastrously damaged by tsunami, made me imagine a lot of things.

Our activity kept going; around 450,000 prints were successfully returned to the original owners or closely related ones. At the same time, there were also many other photos that would be most likely discarded due to their serious damages. He and I therefore established the Lost & Found Project, an activity to organize occasions for those with difficulties to physically visit afflicted areas to see such nowhere-to-go photographs.

We received a lot of inquiries to do exhibitions in various places in different countries, to which we ourselves were also invited to go. With the exhibited photographs in front of their eyes, each viewer, regardless of age, gender, and nationalities, seemed to relate themselves to the imagery by substituting the tsunami-deprived parts with their own memory. In the meantime, the words “things that float on water” were still in the back of my head, but unable to think of anything particular to photograph, I could not yet start working on it. Around a year had passed and he died. I thought such nonsense should not be true. And since then, I had somehow forgotten our promise for quite a while.

One day, after another few years, I went to a shrine on the top of a mountain to pray for a safe delivery for someone I know. In the slightly cold air, I ascended the steps all the way up, and beside the shrine gate, I found a couple of large jugs filled with transparent water to the limit of surface tension. Into each of the jugs, coins have been tossed, among which many lay at the bottom, looking blue, and a few floated on water, glittering in silver. At the very moment when I saw this light swaying on water surface, I realized that the time had come.

After all, what does “things that float on water” really indicate? Seeking for an answer to this, I photographed different subjects one after another. At the same time, life went on; I got married and then we had a child around a year later. Here came my turn to take our own family photographs, just like those numerous ones that I cleansed in the aftermath of the earthquake. Marriage, delivery, child-raising. Every time a new photo was taken, in association with the existing ones, it slightly changed the entire meaning.

Photographs straddle over multiple timeframes, through which some are forgotten and others are recollected. Every time you look back, episodes are newly connected or separated, continually spinning the narrative into the future.

When I responded to him saying I would sometime try with “things that float on water,” I never expected it would eventually get related to me photographing my own child. And now, what the words he uttered eight years ago allude to also feels different from before.