"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 found it lives continuing in this place from generations to generations too, 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.
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.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 be at somewhere I don't belong to.
2016 Kochi, Japan.