Shore

Yuki Shimizu

"Shore" by Yuki Shimizu is a mixture of narratives by various beings. Included in this photo book are photographs she took on her travels along the water's edge, words inspired by old stories she learned there and memories of others, and images generated by the decomposition of negative film with mold and sea water. 

Water is an essential part of people's lives, but at the same time, it is a source of great misery. In rural Japan, people have long worshipped rivers as dragons and offered sacrifices in reservoirs. Although the tsunami killed many people, we cannot give up our hope and faith in something that comes from beyond the sea. 

Such experiences led Yuki Shimizu on a journey to pursue the spirituality of beings living by the water. 
In the mountains of Japan, she photographed rivers where princesses who committed suicide by entering the water became dragon gods, ponds where sacrifices were made. She photographed the underground waters of Israel, people singing the joy of water, the ruins of an oasis town in Uzbekistan, and the desert where an ancient lake dried up in New Mexico. Along the way, she collected folklore about dragon gods and sacrifices, records of floods, tsunamis, and flood control, and wrote stories inspired by them. 

Yuki Shimizu emphasized the coincidence and abstraction of snapshots and created narratives to more clearly show the presence of unexpected others reflected in the photographs. The words do not express her mental images, nor are they a direct description of the subject, but a re-telling of the landscape. 
The photograph only captures the present, but by adding the words, she adds interference from the time axis after the photo was taken to the photo that captures a moment in the past. As a result, the landscape is vividly alive with the presence of someone who may have been there seconds, decades, or centuries ago. 
They speak of the universal fears and expectations felt by people living near water.

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In winter the algae brown, and the green bugs perish If they are properly connected to the sea

They'll be born again with spring

You ate the green bugs as you cleaned the garden the reason you will come back here in the spring

I found the whole place filled with foam of the waves You are standing on the waves

If I speak to you now

I'll never leave the shore

Text by Yuki Shimizu

Translation: Miyuki Hinton, Yuki Shimizu