思い出 Omoide (working title)

Since moving to New York 10 years ago, summer is the time we go back home to Japan to see family. We escape to the mountains of Nagano, where the greenery is moist, cicadas louder and clock ticks slower. Over time, my recollections of other seasons have faded, while summer memories layer themselves like sediment. This is not just a documentation of place, but an ongoing meditation of remembering—how we return, physically and emotionally, to the spaces that shape us.

Omoide—meaning “memory” in Japanese—is both the working title and the theme of the monochrome series, tracing the fleeting impressions that accumulate with each visit. Working in black and white gives focus on texture, the way emotions, and perhaps memory, linger in the details of our surroundings. Through this work, I explore the slippage between memory and present, and how photography can hold and rewrite our connection to where call home.