Aki Onda performance Cassette Memories in Sokolowsko, 2018 | Photo: Kazimierz Ździebło, Courtesy of Festival Sanatorium Dzwieku
Interview with Aki Onda By Kristan Kennedy
KK: You began working as a professional photographer at a very young age, can you tell us about the kinds of things you were shooting and how and why you got started? AO: I was really into French literature and particularly attracted to Surrealism, and while reading those books I encountered photos of May Ray. That’s how I got interested in photography. Since I was little, I couldn’t get along with the hyper-conservative Japanese education system and refused to obey its rules. I was an enfant terrible and instead of going to school, I spent time reading books at libraries and wandering in Osaka and Kyoto at night with a camera in my hand. Then, I met the music critic and editor Yuzuru Agi (founder of Rock Magazine and Vanity Records) who recognized something in my photos, published them in his magazine, and asked me to take photos of musicians. Then, other magazines started giving me assignments. 22
That’s how I got involved in music as a photographer and met musicians such as Arto Lindsay, John Zorn, Blixa Bargeld, and many others through photo sessions. I also documented dance performances and once spent three days with Min Tanaka and Milford Graves in a theater in Osaka. That was wild. One of the shows was disrupted as a male dancer of Tanaka’s troupe set fire on stage and everybody had to evacuate. I was fifteen years old and that lasted for three years until mental depression took over all my energy. KK: Let’s talk about memory, or lack of, how you record or keep it, how you try to preserve it, how forgetting can be a kind of safety net or relief from trauma, how the gap in memory — one you can’t control — is something menacing and what you do to fill that gap.
