Masahisa Fukase was born in Bifuka, a small town in rural northern Hokkaido, where he grew up working in the family’s photo studio with the expectation that he would one day inherit the business. At eighteen he left home and moved to Tokyo, eventually becoming one of the most important art photographers in Japan. Yet in times of difficulty, he returned repeatedly to photograph his hometown, his family, and the landscapes of Hokkaido.

Fukase’s best known work, Karasu (a term that corresponds to both crows and ravens) , is a solitary black and white journey through memory and relationships, set primarily against the haunting landscape of winter in rural Hokkaido. Over the ten years he spent on the subject, Fukase would come to identify with the image of the karasu, an alienated scavenger picking through the discarded and decaying at the veil between life and death. In the aftermath of a divorce, Fukase articulated his screams through imagery, using a camera as a mirror and a projecting lens to magnify his pain into artwork. Much as the karasu flock to their homes in the trees in the fading light of dusk, in his darkest hours Fukase returned to the places where his roots ran deepest - the river valleys and rugged landscapes of the place where he was raised.

In Shinto legend, Yatagarasu is a three legged crow god who offers guidance. At a moment where I lacked the vocabulary to express myself in a language that was at once familiar and totally foreign, I chose to follow the route Fukase took at the beginning of his project, photographing new landscapes not dissimilar to my own northern home. By briefly borrowing the homeland of another, I hoped to learn an adequate language of images through which to express myself in a moment of struggle.

北北海道の田舎町の美深町で深瀬昌久が生まれました。そこで父の写真館を手伝いながら成長しました。彼は父の事業を引き継ぐはずでしたが、１８歳の時、芸術の写真を勉強するために東京に引っ越し、とうとう日本の屈指の写真家になりました。しかし、家族が大変な時北海道に戻り、出身の町と風景を撮りました。

　深瀬の一番有名な「鴉」という作品は、モノクロで表現して冬の北海道で一人で撮影しました。このプロジェクトの１０年間を通して、深瀬は鴉に共感して、命と死の間で、死んだ動物やゴミを食べる「スカベンジャー」をとらえています。離婚後に憂鬱になって、深瀬は写真によって苦しみの悲鳴を芸術に高め、カメラを使ってこれを表現しました。また、夕暮れに森の中の家庭に鴉が帰るように深瀬は暗闇がある土地で、彼が育ったの自然やゴツゴツした風景の北海道に帰りました。

　神道の神話の中で、やた鴉は導きの神です。親しみがありながら外国語で表現が出来ない時に、相応しい写真の言葉を調べられるように深瀬の鴉の始まりの道筋をたどりました。深瀬を形作った北海道に短い期間生活し、私の出身地のような風景を何枚か撮りました。見てください。