Haru and Mina VOL 1
HARU & MINA CHILDREN ALWAYS ACT MORE
HIDEAKI HAMADA
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Haru and Mina
My
children
are
not
only
my
little
darlings
but
off-shoots
of
my-
self. When I look at them, I have a strange feeling - as if I am watching myself re-living my life. What I want to show is their “living form�. Children always act more than I expect. The inspiration for my photography comes from this sort of behavior. Though I direct some of my photographs, in most cases I take pictures of my children just as they are. When I take photos of my children, the important thing is to maintain an objective perspective. Not too close, but also not too far away, as if I am watching them from behind. Something close to mere observation, I think. Obeying this rule gives the photos a universal quality. I believe that this universality is necessary to communicate their living forms to someone else.
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My photos are the best gift for their future. They will be a time machine for them. So I want to take photos that they will feel something when they grow up. When I was a child, my mother occasionally gazed at me this way. Though I had some awareness of it, I pretended not to notice because I think I felt a little embarrassed. But now, I can understand how she felt because I, too, sometimes gaze at my children as my mother did. Nothing illustrates the future for me like my dear children. I wonder if they feel the same thing I felt when my mother gazed lovingly at me. I hope that they do. Although photographers usually tend to want to snap pictures at certain specific moments, children don’t smile or cry all the time. Rather, they don’t have any special facial expression much of the time. I want to use photography to keep their living forms in that day-to-day world. This way, the highly expressive faces that they occasionally make will look more life-like, and will produce photographs that we will never get tired of looking at.
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When I see decades-old photos which anonymous
people took and left behind, I obtain a definite feeling
of “something existed there�. Today as well, when I
release the shutter, I hope to take photos like those.
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Haru and Mina Even when we use digital cameras, we may later notice something different if we
can just break the habit of looking at the photos as soon as we have taken them. This
is neither meant as criticism of digital cameras, nor as praise of film cameras. I just think that we need to take the time to think deeply about the process of taking photos. When
I
see
decades-old
photos
which
anonymous
people
took
and
left behind, I obtain a definite feeling of “something existed there�. Today as well, when I release the shutter, I hope to take photos like those.
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Haru and Mina
“My photos are the best gift for their future. They will be a time machine for them. So I want to take photos that they will feel something when they grow up�
www.harumina.com
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