From 1996 to 1999, I have worked on a project photographing waterfalls at night. In my photographs, there are three important elements that are present –the waterfall, the image of a carp projected onto the waterfall and a man projecting the image of a carp with a slide projector. The three consistent elements have a deeply rooted meaning for me that is based on my cultural heritage and my view of the world.
I travel to different waterfalls. In the pictures, this is the element that is constantly different. In all the natural waterfalls, water has been falling since the start of time and it will continue to fall through the passage of time. I think of the falling water as the symbol of eternity. This idea of eternity is incomprehensible to me. But while I gaze at the falling water in the dark for a long time, there is a moment when my sense of time and space is paralyzed and I am transported into a different kind of space and time that is not “real” to me anymore. The consistency of the falling water that contests the passage of time crystallizes the idea of eternity.
Looking up at the waterfall, I ponder the origins of water, the basic source of life. The image of the carp is a projection of my desire to see the origin of life and the eternities. Without the projection of the light onto the waterfall, there is nothing but darkness in the falling water. My idea of projecting the image of a carp onto the waterfall came from an old Japanese expression, “Koi no takinobori” which means a state of something leaping straight to the top. A carp goes up against the current of water fighting gravitational pull. In Japan, a carp stands for the strength of life, a symbol of energy present in the cycle of life.
The man in the photograph is important to me since he represents my state of mind when I am gazing at the waterfall for a long time. He is motionless for the entire time of the exposure. In the picture he is in harmony with the space –he enters into the space of eternity. As he enters the timeless space, I want to show his state of mind. A state of mind is invisible but I want the viewer to see the invisible in the photographs. I hope that my photograph will be a point of contact between the visible and invisible world, the exterior and the interior as well as reality and the mystery of life.
