Photography; Providing Stillness to Motion in Reality

Shiho Roppongi · March 7, 2020 · 3 min read

I’ve been taking photos mostly everyday since I was in my teens. It’s been almost like an addiction really, carrying my DSLR to capture different people, sceneries, angles, moments…showing a bit of what I see, expressing my own self, through the lens. The interesting thing about photography is that not only does it introduce you to a perspective but it also introduces you to the person behind the camera and it is hauntingly personal sometimes.

When I think back on why I love photography so much, it brings me back to when I was fourteen when my father died of cancer. Losing my father was definitely a traumatic event for me, especially because it happened so fast. After he was diagnosed, he passed away within four months. This person, this sureness, this existence that I had believed in, suddenly disappeared, and that introduced me to life and death. I began to question the figure that appeared in front of me. What is in the core of this?

When my father passed away, his body was in front of me, but my father was gone. The arms that I had cuddled into at night, the smile that provided comfort, the legs that drove me places, were indeed right in front of me, but they were useless, powerless just like a tin can on the street. The body in front of me was no more than a body mask of my father, because I knew “he“ was gone.

Then I started wondering like a crazy person; big picture things like, what actually makes this person my best friend, to the silliest things like so what makes this wooden table a desk.

All of these bilateral concepts of life and death, emotion and physicality, essence and shape, detached themselves from one another. I was left only to be watching this world I had known, become fragmented into pieces. It then built back into this new form, this new world that I had never witnessed before. Through the same scenery, I could hear the essence, I could see something I hadn’t before and that gave me immense power and a beautiful perspective of life.

The movement, this video of life I had been watching, suddenly became split cherish able moments fast played. I was determined to capture it all and to share its beauty to people.

Mortality, emotions, meaning,,, words that were no more than a way of communication seemed to cry out the true intentions to me.

There are the things that happen in front of your eyes, then there are the things that occur under the surface. But just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean it’s any less real…perhaps it actually has realness more than anything.

The photo above, provides spotlight to these three characters of life; a case of tobacco, a lighter and an astray. It’s a normal scenery you’ll find anywhere but here on this table it is their stage.

Photography brings life to these moments, these characters in our lives, that might seem insignificant, first glance. It allows you to imagine things, dialogue, characters beyond reality, it provides surrealism.