With his new family and move to the seaside, Ueda bid farewell to his long, onerous struggle to find his own photography and entered a season of joyful camerawork. Ueda’s seeing eyes came out into the light. Born of the sun shower, this floral collection fairly brims with a life-affirming brilliance unlike anything Ueda previously produced.
Blooming in broad daylight “The summer of 1995, I took a vase of flowers my wife had arranged out into the sunny garden and photographed it. We had just moved to the seaside and the light on clear days was dazzling. In my commercial work, I always feel like I’m jetting about. But during the occasional break, whenever I can get a solid stretch of time, I photograph at a feverish pitch. Viewing flowers in the sun might seem rather pedestrian, but flowers from indoors visibly regain their lost vital force once out in the sunlight. They actually seem to come to life again, even the bent and faded ones. It was that vitality of the flowers and the rejuvenating power of the sun I hoped to photograph. A shift from expecting light to gently illuminate the essence latent in the dark as in most photographs, to wanting to see that essence out in the sunlight—these Flowers sprang from that conscious intention.
from the "Photographer Interview" section of the FujiFilm homepage (used with permission)
