2006, Little More Co.,Ltd, リトルモア Diary : Karen Ueda Design : Kaoru Kasai, Mariko Hikichi
A surprising first, Ueda’s own family photos spanning thirteen years from marriage to the birth of the couple’s fourth child, all lovingly captured in the Leica presented by his wife. Filled with the photographer’s own discoveries within the everyday, the act of photographing becomes a moving emotional experience, as he writes at the close of the book:
The family smiles in photos. Moment by moment becoming past, fated to vanish Into the never-never of the everyday, Precious tiny smiles not to be seen again. Photos remember them clearly. The family is not all smiles. But no one thinks to photograph sad times, hard times, Angry pouts or marital spats or commonplace occurrences. Yet at the least hint of a happy face, I quietly reach for my camera. So naturally the album fills up with tiny little smiles. Sorrow unto oblivion, happiness into photos. —Tokyo, January 2006
Unrepeatable moments “Starting from around 1993 when I got married, I would take 35mm snapshots of my wife and personal surroundings. Then when my first daughter was born, I was so happy, I lugged my 8 x 10 to my wife’s hospital, much to the consternation of the nurses, just to frame the blissful sleeping face of our first born in large format. Peering through the viewfinder I knew it was the wrong camera, but I’d come this far, so a great big 8 x 10 it was. Then, for my birthday one year, my wife gave me a Leica M4. Overjoyed, I immediately began snapping photos of her and the kids. Only when the oldest girl protested, ‘Enough already!’ did I stop to repent my silliness. A child cautioning an adult to behave, I remember it so clearly. “I could tell my family photographs were changing little by little. As I trained light on the kids and focused my feelings, something was changing in me as well. The compulsive quest of my youth for total perfectionism, power and beauty was giving way to a need to engage with the uncontrollably boisterous glow of daily life, to notice, accept and above all to treasure the ordinary yet unrepeatable events before my eyes, to capture small slices of the fun. Of course I wasn’t taking photos all day long every day. There were long busy stretches when I forgot, but the children inevitably reminded me. Shouting and playing in happy abandon, they’d suddenly call me, ‘Look, Daddy! Take a picture!’ Time and again I’d rush to grab my camera wherever I left it and follow the frolic through the finder, bristling at having forsaken the really important things. “Months turned into years, and before I knew it I’d accumulated sprawling masses of negatives. I’d kept snapping shots but had hardly printed any at all. Someday, I told myself, when my schedule allows. Then one day I spied my wife secretly sorting her shots of the children into albums. I felt embarrassed and not a little unsettled: what would have happened if I died unexpectedly with the family photos at loose ends? Who would know they even existed? Or even if they did, who would know which negatives to choose? They might inadvertently toss the whole lot. After that I began to square away the previously untouched negatives in the darkroom. It was a mind-boggling effort, whenever I had a free moment I’d be printing away under the safelight. I think it must have taken me three or four years, but toward the end when I’d reduced the negatives to a manageable quantum, I had a chance to show some of the photos to Sun Jyabang at Little More, who promptly encouraged me, ‘Let’s make a photobook with these.’ I was both thrilled and perplexed: should I really expose my vulnerable family to the world? My wife and I talked it over at length, but failed to reach a conclusion. I argued, however forced, at least we’d have a partial family record in the form of a book, a precious keepsake in twenty or thirty years’ time for our children’s families. Maybe I’d ask Kaoru Kassai to do the jacket design? Finally a year later, the book came off the presses. Irresponsibly after-the-fact, I now only hope and pray it becomes as for my wife and kids the heirloom I believe it will be.”
from the "Photographer Interview" section of the FujiFilm homepage (used with permission)
