Goto Fukue, 2008

Goto Fukue # 1 C-print, 2008

In March – April 2008 I went to an island callled Goto – Fukue, which is the biggest island and a part of the Goto Retto island chain in the East – China Sea and part of Nagasaki prefecture in Kyushu. When photographing there, I am trying to provide a window into worlds unknown to most people. For the window that my photographs provide to be authentic and meaningful, I need to spend time in these places and get to know them for myself. The places reveal themselves only as I explore them myself - physically, visually and spiritually. Only then I can communicate my very personal sense of a place through photographs. On the beach at low tide called Sansan Tomie, I met elderly women picking seaweed. Among many different types of seaweed, they mostly picked aosa and wakame. At full moon the tide is at its lowest and the ocean floor reveals its beauty, the seaweed in acid green and brown colours among black lava stones. The women worked at high speed, using the short time before the water level started to rise again. It was an aesthetic experience to be exactly there, standing on the ocean floor while observing a craft in execution. And I shot with all my concentration, knowing it would take another while before the next period of the highest possible distance between high and low tide would occur and the opportunity to see the women spread out like dots on a carpet of seaweed and stones again. The colours, the smell and the neatness of the work was quintessentially Japanese, as I had imagined it.

Goto Fukue # 11 C-print, 2008, 60 x 60 cm

Goto Fukue # 17 C-print, 2008, 60 x 60 cm

Goto Fukue # 23 C-print, 2008, 60 x 60 cm