Still Life

The Wintertag (A winter’s day) series is dedicated to winter landscapes in my region Kanagawa in Japan. This series is an ongoing project, which started in January 2014. More particularly, these photos were all taken at the foot of Mount Fuji and nearby my hometown (an area along the Sagami River). Lake Yamanaka, a central figure to the series, rests at the foot of Mount Fuji and is approximately 70 km from where I live. While it rarely snows in town, Lake Yamanaka freezes over every winter. In November of 2016, after a record 54 years, it finally snowed again in my hometown. Lake Yamanaka is also the headstream of the Sagami River, and as such the only lake with a natural outflow into Mount Fuji's Five Lakes rivers. // A sub-theme of this series is representing the landscapes imagined in early childhood. I grew up in Kanagawa prefecture, where it rarely snows. When I was small, my mother would often say to me, “There was terrible snow the day you were born.” What she was referring to was different from what I imagined. In fact she was talking about a terrorist incident that took place in snowed-under Nagano prefecture. There is no connection between me and this incident. My image of the day I was born is the winter landscape I imagined from hearing my mother’s words.