Miki Hasegawa photo exhibition “YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime” 6/12 – 6/27

05/16/2021

Reminders Photography Stronghold is pleased to announce Miki Hasegawa photo exhibition “YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime” from the 12th of June to the 27th.
Hasegawa has produced “The Path Of Million Pens” at Photobook As Object in 2015, and “Internal Notebook” at Photobook Master Class in 2017.
This work, “YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime” was created through the mentorship program by Yumi Goto of RPS.

After her mother-in-law passed away after a long battle with illness, Hasegawa began to feel regret and loss, and began to think about how to remember and accept the death of a family member.

In this exhibition, she will trace her life through her mother-in-law’s album and discuss the death of loved ones. The exhibition was held at this time of the year, as June is the anniversary of her death.

In conjunction with this exhibition, an artist book “YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime” will be published. Please wait for the announcement of this book.

We will update posts for further information on SNSs. Please stay tuned.

©︎Miki Hasegawa / YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime

YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime

I had thought it would be better for everyone in the family to go on with life as usual, until death became an unavoidable subject for us all.

My mother-in-law was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma in September 2016, and immediately underwent surgery and chemotherapy, but within a year her cancer had returned. We’d exhausted all possible forms of surgery and treatment.

Despite this, she was her usual energetic self – she kept up with her daily routines, busying herself with housework as usual, and even keeping up with her exercise regime.

My mother-in-law’s condition quickly deteriorated after the doctor told her to stay at home. We fed her what seemed like fistfuls of pills after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We arranged home visits with the doctor and set up a rented home-care bed on the first floor. Within days came the wheelchair, and then the bedpan. And finally, her body could only accept a liquid diet.

Unfamiliar with the extent of what her care would entail, my family and I soon were overwhelmed and exhausted by the mental and physical toll of it all. After an in-home check-up, her doctor, noticing that the regimen was becoming too much for us, took us aside and proposed:

“Why don’t you put your mother-in-law in hospice for a week to give the family a break?”

A few days later, the doctor’s proposal became an order. “She has to be admitted to hospice. She may have only one week left to live,” her doctor warned us.

In the cab on the way to the hospice, my mother-in-law, who had always been a brave woman, squeezed my hand. “I’m scared,” she said.
When we arrived, the doctor suggested we put her on a morphine drip to make her comfortable. My mother-in-law turned to me and asked, “what do you think?”
But I couldn’t answer.
The next day, I said, “If the pain is so bad shouldn’t you do it?”
She agreed to the morphine.

Delirium from the cancer and morphine had set in, and soon we couldn’t communicate with her at all.
“The plane…” she said, looking confused and distant. She fell silent. It would be the last thing she ever said to us. We never heard her voice again after that.

Every day, I picked up my daughter from school and we would travel straight to the hospice together. Feeling suffocated by the looming presence of death, we would walk through the hospice grounds together, taking in all its perfectly kept trees and flowers. It was in these moments that the contrast between life and death was almost tangible.
In a quiet lounge of the hospice, the ticking of a beautiful clock was heard, my mother-in-law would surely love it.

On June 27, 2018, just one week after her arrival at the hospice, my mother-in-law took her last breath.

Consumed by grief, my father-in-law cried whenever we mentioned my mother-in-law, and while sifting through her medical reports, he would blame himself for not having done enough to spot her cancer earlier.” He seemed to have been visiting the hospice to see the nurse a few times, hoping he could talk to someone, other than his family, who knew about his wife’s last moments.

As for my husband, he seemed like he couldn’t accept her illness nor her death.
My daughter however, remained emotionless, never shedding a single tear.

About six months later, I found my father-in-law organizing old pictures. Then, from the storage room under the stairs, came out a cardboard box that was filled with tons of albums.
Flipping through the albums, he said,
“I begged her to marry me.”

Like my father-in-law, I picked up the album and retraced the life of my mother in-law through the album.
And there, I found hand-written words next to a picture of the two, which was taken when they were first lovers. “YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime”

The “you” that was supposed to be with us was no longer there.
The two figures in the back, sitting on the sofa, have become one, and the two voices we used to hear from downstairs have been replaced by the sound of the TV that echoes all day long.
The orchid she had been growing in the kitchen was in full bloom.

Translations and English Proofreading : Christo Geoghegan, Megan Saltzman, Jinhwa Chang

©︎Miki Hasegawa / YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime

Miki Hasegawa photo exhibition “YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime”
Date: June 12th – 27th, 2021.
Opening hours: 1pm – 7pm
Artist talk event: June 12th 7pm ~
(Capacity: 10 people, Facebook live streaming will be available at the same time.

◎An artist talk and related events will be held in conjunction with this exhibition.
There will be a limited number of participants at the space, so please register here if you would like to attend.
The application form is here. ↓↓
https://forms.gle/DYJwVKyKR1yyPgbz9
**However there is no need to apply to enter the exhibition.

◎Related Event: “Talking about my late mother
In conjunction with the photo exhibition “YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime,” we will hold an event “Talking about my late mother” to share memories of your mother, mother-in-law, and those who thought of you as a mother.

Saturday, June 19, 2021, 11:00-12:30 (the photo exhibition can be viewed from 1:00-7:00 PM)
The exhibition will be open from 1:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. The time may be extended depending on the progress of the event.

Participation fee : Free

Capacity : 10 people (on a first-come, first-served basis) From the perspective of preventing corona infection, we will limit the number of participants to 10.

Click here for the registration form. ↓
https://forms.gle/DYJwVKyKR1yyPgbz9

Location: Reminders Photography Stronghold Gallery
Address: 38-5, Higashimukojima 2-chome, Sumida-ku, Tokyo
(6 minutes walk from Tobu Skytree Line Hikifune station, 5 minutes walk from Keisei Hikifune station)

Inquiries: miki.hasegawa@reminders-project.org

Support: The Grant for Arts and Cultural activities in Sumida

©︎Miki Hasegawa / YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime

©︎Miki Hasegawa / YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime

©︎Miki Hasegawa / YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime

©︎Miki Hasegawa / YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime

Profile | Miki Hasegawa
Born in 1973. Graduated (BA) from Showa Women’s University.After working as an architect for several years, she started working as a professional photographer.

Her first artist book, “The Path Of Million Pens” has been selected as one of the finalists of 2014 Unseen Dummy Award(Netherlands), and received high praise throughout the world, being selected for various global photography collection fairs. In 2019, she published “Internal Notebook”, a photo book about child abuse, by an Italian publisher “CEIBA editions”.

The book has won awards for photography books at Pictures of the Year International (USA) and The Centro de la Imagen (Peru).

She is still working on a project on the social issues of children and women in Japan.

https://www.miki-hasegawa.com/

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