Some things can only be obtained by moving my body to face my photographic subject head-on. I have found this to be an effective way to approach, however incrementally, the unanswerable question of why I find myself alive right here and right now. After living this way for more than thirty years, I felt the desire to once more confirm the ground on which I stood, not in terms of regional or national boundaries, but in the simple fact that I was on this planet.
When I visited Iceland in the summer of 2019, having been there only once before some twenty years earlier, that desire was fulfilled. I saw geysers like the planet’s breath and glaciers far beyond any human time. What I witnessed seemed to illuminate my own existence. One experience inside a dormant volcano left a particularly strong impression. When I looked up, I saw light spilling in through the crater above, and its shape was reminiscent of female genitalia. As I gazed at this sight, I felt like a fetus enveloped by the earth, and experienced a connection to the planet unlike anything I had felt before.
My plans to return to Iceland in winter to probe these connections more deeply were thwarted by COVID-19. As a result, I instead visited Hokkaido many times in winter. There, I encountered things that can only be seen in the most severe cold, and I was reminded of how small and fragile my own body truly is.
In retrospect, the past decade has been marked by a series of social upheavals, from the Great East Japan Earthquake to the COVID-19 pandemic. On a personal level, I experienced major turning points such as marriage and childbirth, as if living my life within great undulations. The days rushed by, but with the onset of the pandemic, time seemed to slow somewhat. At times, while working at home, I hear the stream outside, look through the window at the flowing water, and feel a sense of calm. Spending extended periods at home for the first time in many years reminded me of my childhood, the long afternoons after school, the seemingly endless summer holidays. I wonder if my daughter, now moving through a similar passage of time, feels the same.
Our hair and nails grow; day by day, second by second, we move closer to death. By focusing on these small but certain changes, I felt as though the flow of time, which had seemed to accelerate each year, had been slightly rewound. My aging and my daughter’s development unfold side by side. Will warming continue in the same way, until the glaciers I once saw disappear? Everything is connected to the life before us.
Even if we cannot stop ourselves from moving toward death, we can still improve the places in which we live. Taking the initials of “Mother Earth” results in “M/E.” When I wrote these two letters, I felt a connection between all things, from those so vast that their full form cannot be perceived with the naked eye to the smallest individuals. It reminded me of the mysterious sensation I experienced beneath the volcanic crater, a sense of inversion and unity between the planet and myself.
Rinko Kawauchi