PICTURE OF MY LIFE ESSAY #9 A Photographer BY JUNPEI UEDA

11/02/2016

Reminders Photography Stronghold Gallery will be celebrating its 4th year anniversary. We will be proudly organizing Junpei Ueda’s solo show in upcoming November. He is one of the 2015 Photobook As Object workshop participants and he has been working on his book project “Picture of My Life” almost a year and finally it’ll be launched at the exhibition. Prior to the show, Junpei is sharing a series of his essay.

Looking through the photos of my daughter gave me the sensation of talking to my parents. Then I remembered the photos of my parents’ funeral altar. Life and death. I had a desire to review what I had and what I was missing as a whole. The need to tell the story of my life grew bigger. Then I started the routine of going through the images that I had shot in the past, photographing my family and showing my portfolio to others.

I wanted to evaluate my ability as a photographer. In the autumn of 2012, at the age of 35, I put my work together into a portfolio and submitted it to a competition organized by Nikon. In December, I received a notification of nomination and exhibited for the first time in June 2013.

The photo exhibition “Letter” consisted of my father’s paintings, photos from my family album, the photos I shot and a letter from my 35-year-old self to my parents. It was exactly what I had wanted to show when I was 21. I saw the fragments of my life captured in that space. I saw a stranger crying while viewing my work. I felt that the photos spoke to people. The viewers could connect their own experiences with mine. With this exhibition, I was recognized as a photo-artist for the first time.

In 2014, I won the annual Jun Miki Prize for emerging photographers. I believe that my family made me into a photographer. The prize encouraged me to devote myself to photography. I wanted to live the life of a photo-artist. I managed to make time to photograph while working for the family business.

—- To be continued to #10.

English translation: Miyuki Okuyama
English proofreading: Tan Lee Kuen

Exhibition, News