馬場磨貴写真集
デザイン：寄藤文平＋阿津侑三（文平銀座）
Photographs by Maki Umaba
Design：Bunpei Yorifuji + Yuzo Azu (Bunpei Ginza)
Published in July 2016.
※本書は表紙がA、B、Cの3種類ございます。中身のページは同じです。
About Book
風景のなかに現れる巨大な妊婦の愛と問いかけ
写真家 馬場磨貴は、自身のホームページなどで被写体となる妊婦さんを募集し、ヌードのポートレートを撮影してきました。そして、「ある日、街を歩いていてふと空を見上げると、ビルの間から巨大な妊婦さんが現れました。その日から公演や線路の向こう側...いたるところに彼女たちは姿を見せました」（馬場の言葉より）。妊婦さんが宿す生命の力や揺らぎが、身のまわりの風景と交わったところに、このシリーズ「We are here」は誕生したのです。
うららかな春の公園や海辺、高層ビルの狭間、ドームの背後、そして福島や広島にも巨大な妊婦さんたちが現れます。思い思いの姿で風景に溶け込み、呼吸し、私たち人間の存在へ優しく、ときに憂いを帯びた眼差しを向けてくれたりもします。巨大な妊婦さんは、その大きさや力でもって何かを傷つけたりするでしょうか？ 生まれたままの姿で丸腰である彼女たちは、戦ったり破壊したりすることなく、ただこの世界に存在しているのです。
そして、雑踏や路地の物陰にふと等身大の妊婦さんを見るとき、その無防備で弱さを湛えた姿にはっとさせられます。命は、生と死を同時に孕むものであることを、その陰りから思い起こされます。
「We are here」は、生きる力に貫かれた妊婦さんたちのシリーズであり、またこの地上に存在する私たち皆の姿でもあります。風景は美しく愛おしく、そして切実な痛みをもって目の前にあります。巨大な妊婦さんの解き放たれた姿を折々に仰ぎ見ながら、私たちはある安心と指針を得るのかもしれません。
We are here
Maki Umaba
Upon first encounter with Maki Umaba's We Are Here a viewer may be puzzled- opening the book to a random page, it would be quite natural to feel a sense of bewilderment at these images of fully nude and pregnant women towering over the Tokyo skyline. They loom over airports and highways- they peek down through openings in skyscrapers at the city's daily motions below.
What exactly is going on?
While Umaba's use of absurdity draws the viewer in it later becomes apparent that the work is a testament to her own experiences with the trauma and horror of miscarriage. In the post-script, Umaba notes:
I who have yet to experience death trembled to find there was 'death' inside my body. The life and death that occurred in my womb made me aware that women are weak beings whose will, however strong, is powerless to prevent it. To look with the eyes of those who are weak is much more difficult than to look with the eyes of those who are strong.
One day as I was walking in town I suddenly had a flash of insight. A very large pregnant woman appeared before me between two buildings. At the sight of this large figure, I felt a sense of liberation and overwhelming relief. The anger and unease I had felt for so long that and was unable to vent rose up from the pit of my stomach and became lighter.
Thus, they were born.
Like a storybook, We Are Here is best viewed page by page, in order. Like a story book, We Are Here has a cast of giantesses and anonymous citizens and a dangerous and potentially deadly power. It all takes place in a city which, page by page, grows smaller as the women continue to grow larger- the city recedes and is replaced by the desolate off-limits zones of Fukushima villages. Into a mist-filled dusk, the women disappear.
We Are Here might first be approached with a smile, but it builds upon itself as a consideration of support for women and motherhood- the very basis from which all humanity is biologically, sociologically, and culturally born from.
