MARIE LIESSE

Bridge between two worlds
2020
(Prints & Installation for sale)

Kosuke Okahara is a Japanese photographer known for his long-term documentary projects on socially engaging subjects that range from the drug trafficking in Columbia to the teenage self-harm in Japan.   He commits himself to stay with his subjects over a long period of time, often sharing the time in their living space, being sometimes a friend more than a photographer, and continuously following them through their loss, triumphs, and transformations over the years.  This commitment coupled with his empathetic nature had earned him the trust and the space to capture the most intimate, honest and vulnerable moments of his subject’s lives and made him an internationally acclaimed documentary photographer.  

However, with this style of working, he began to accumulate the conflicted feelings towards the documentary photography itself.  While his process uncovered complex realities that put everything into unending debate, the project always needed to be created, pursued and presented with a conclusive message in mind.

  Blue Affairs is a work based on the series of photos Okahara shot in a town called Koza as a response to this feeling.  In 20xx whilst he visited Okinawa on a news assignment to cover the referendum over the relocation of the U.S. military base there, he stumbled across the town of Koza.  He was strangely drawn to this forgotten corner of the world and started to shoot the photos of the people of Koza, before he even knew the reasons why.  He shot the drunk regulars that gathered around the bar which strangely disappeared at the end of the night, a couple who made love in front of him to defy their fragile relationship, an illegal cockfight event that took place in the middle of a tall grass field, a street full of eisa dancers, an empty street that once was a busy red-light district for American soldiers who departed to Vietnam War in the 60’s, a hotel room without windows that he always stayed in, or a woman that disappeared into the ocean.  

Okahara creates a short film “Blue Affairs” by connecting these photos and narrating about the people he had met and things he had seen.  Like a dream, the series of the images put together and the stories told though his voice are random, bizarre and inconclusive, but vividly provokes your brain and attracts you to see it again and again.  His voice echoes “I have the same dreams.”  

He offers this film as an installation work.  The short film premieres at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival as one of the experimental film nominee in 2021.  The artist also published a photo book under the same title – available for sale via this link.

Select framed photographs from this series as well as the installation work are available for sale through Marina Amada Art Projects. 

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