THE RESTORATION WILL ESSAY #5 Family snapshots
Reminders Photography Stronghold Gallery will be organizing the first exhibition of 2017, Mayumi Suzuki’s “The Restoration Will.” She is one of the 2016 Photobook As Object workshop participants and she has been working on her book project “The Restoration Will” almost a year since the workshop and finally it’ll be launched at the exhibition. Prior to the show, Mayumi is sharing a series of her essay.
Mayumi Suzuki’s exhibition
March 4th to 26th. Open Everyday 1 to 7pm at the Reminders Photography Stronghold gallery.
Opening reception and artist talk on March 11th at 6pm.
© 2017 Mayumi Suzuki / The Restoration Will
Family snapshots
My handmade book “The Restoration Will” begins its story from my family snapshots. It tells what kind of town we lived in, what kind of family we were. As it progresses the snaps are changing, seemingly ominous like something happened to them. The snaps were washed white, the images disappearing. These scars seem similar to my memories which are slowly fading.
Many snapshots were collected and washed by volunteers at the photo recovery center in each town and city. They tried to give them back to victims who lost family, friends, houses…etc. The snapshots provided memories, they showed evidence of our history and they showed we have lived here.
For me, this was also so important. All the snaps were taken by my father; memories came rushing back even if parts of the images were lost. These were very useful for editing my book. To tell the truth, I hadn’t looked at the snapshots, I had left them in the closet for five years after collecting them. I was trying to forget ‘the past’ during these five years. It was too sad to remember about my parents, the photo studio and the whole of my hometown. In return for losing these five years, I had to release the past from before the tsunami. These snapshots have many layers of scars mixing with the history of my life. I can’t tell if this happens for all the victims, maybe it’s only me.
In the photobook workshop with Jan Rosseel and Yumi Goto, they suggested mixing my snapshots and B&W images to tell this story. They encouraged me to overcome ‘the past’. Finally, with this project, I had found a way to tell the perfect story of seeing our parents again.
Text by Mayumi Suzuki,
English proofreading by Mike Ward
To be continued….
READ ESSAY ARHIVE
THE RESTORATION WILL ESSAY #1 FATHER’S LENS BY MAYUMI SUZUKI
THE RESTORATION WILL ESSAY #2 BLUE PORTFOLIO BY MAYUMI SUZUKI
THE RESTORATION WILL ESSAY #3 BLUE WAVE BY MAYUMI SUZUKI
THE RESTORATION WILL ESSAY #4 Candle night
ALL 87 EDITIONS ARE PRE-ORDERED NOW. THANK YOU!