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The process of becoming strikes me more as a kind of stripping away than layering over. Years go by, life moves us in varying directions, photographs are made along the way. And dutifully, much like a tourist, we accumulate a record of what took place. But like any story, the narrative is comprised of more than just the facts of it. And years later, what lingers is like a fossilized version of the original; in its spareness, there exists a kind of beauty.
These photographs were born out of a time of transition in my life.
Being an American married to a Japanese man, my world has always involved a kind of bridging between the two cultures, each accommodating the other in a sometimes tricky back and forth.
Deciding to have two children together made the experience all the more complicated, as their small and developing identities came to the fore. My world simultaneously expanded and contracted: trips abroad became more frequent while, at the same time, there were often days when a walk down the block was about all I could pull off.
Years working as a journalist provided a familiar frame through which I viewed much of the world. But with that phase suddenly behind me, mine was now a life most ordinary; slower, certainly, and richer, perhaps.
Trained on the "big," I found myself reveling in smallness. The intimacies of my little world became metaphor: a sword laid down, an overwhelmed kitchen.
Life shifted and with it, perspective.
This period provided the soil from which much of this work arose.
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