庭という小さな場所で見る、植物と人の重なり

Life Works

Shun Kataoka

In the small space of a garden, the dense cycles of time are seen.

Taking photographs is a way for me to halt the flow of the passing days. It renders invisible the repetition of seasons, which can be likened to a circle, and blocks a direct view of changes. Through photography, I arrest this flow around a specific place, creating lines of demarcation where none existed before. This gives rise to questions regarding the places I photograph. The color green informs my approach to one particular garden. I am fascinated by plants. They exist as an unending cycle of change where lush growth withers and flourishes and fades again.

My grandfather grew plants and vegetables. He weeded and watered them, continuing this work for 50 years. 
This garden is a place where traces of his efforts are felt everywhere. He used the leftovers from meals to make compost, and mixed different types of soil suitable for each plant. Every year he created handmade trellises and stakes to help the plants grow. Odds and ends leftover from everyday life played a part here as tools. For only a brief moment, these various objects lent their power. Inadvertently, the garden became a kind of basket that held all sorts of seeds and living things. Seeds planted in pots were overtaken by self-seeking co- habitants who came to live with them. Fruit split open and dried up, spilling their seeds out over the ground. [...]

Here two forces intersect: plants wildly growing, and my grandfather's hands. Though the moment when the ratio reversed cannot be known now, this convergence of life that began with seeds planted 50 years ago has drawn near, like the ripples of a pond, and has spilled out a little more each time the seeds have sprouted.

How many plants have taken root in the garden? I wondered about this as I watched the repeated cycle of this green ebb and flow. In the winter of my fourth year as a photographer, my grandfather departed from this world. The planter of seeds was absent. Even so, the garden, laid open to the transition of seasons, took hold of the seeds in its soil with an expansive embrace and helped them sprout. [...]

People desire plants. They raise them, and co-exist with them. People come and go and places change their appearance. This happens countless times, not only in this garden, but in a great number of places. Does the repetition and circular flow of things continue without end? To look intently at this garden's limited space is to know the unceasing intertwining of people and plants. When I close my eyes and touch the greenery, these boundaries intermingle. At that moment, I am in a dwelling where all life blends into one.

Excerpts from the afterwords

by Shun Kataoka

Although one wants to view grandfather's garden as having descended into chaos, I can't ignore the traces of the ingenuity of ordinary folks that are evident everywhere in it. [...]

Ordinary people must rely on their own labor and make innovative use of the tools at their disposal. Somewhere between reuse and misuse, the plants contentedly take root and grow leaves.

Even though its owner passes away, the garden lives on. Seeds that come from elsewhere fall on the garden and new plants join the aggregate of old plants. Dead plants become nourishment for the next generation. And the many-layered traces of his grandfather that remain in the garden are also nourishment for the photographer.

Excerpts from the text "An Ordinary Garden"  

by Tatsushi Fujihara（Associate Professor, Kyoto University）

出版社HPより