Yoshiyuki Okuyama: Enduring the Pains of Creation to Reach the Forefront of Visual Expression

I became interested in photography during my university years. It started when I began taking photos of location landscapes to draw storyboards for films. I found it fascinating how the imagination creates margins at the moment a photo is captured, and how the parts left unshown can change the viewer's perception.

It ranges from photography and art pieces created by small groups, similar to personal projects, to commercial photography like advertisements. Over the past 12 years, I have mainly focused on these types of jobs. I think it's a good state for me to not be confined to a single field. It's like being surrounded by various canvases and adding a little color to each one, bit by bit. This allows me to always approach challenges with a fresh perspective, wondering, "How did I paint this before?"

For example, a beautiful sunset or a pretty cityscape that could be a postcard feels like a one-dimensional capture of the world. However, the reason we feel something is "beautiful" is precisely because the opposite phenomenon of "not beautiful" exists. Behind a delicious steak, there is the reality of a cow being slaughtered. Everything in the world has a front and a back; when you create depth between them, an aspect appears, and it gradually becomes multi-faceted. What I want to photograph is the "aspect visible only to me" that appears within that. I have pressed the shutter at the moments when I felt I caught a glimpse of that aspect meant only for me.

I have always loved looking at photobooks. While part of the appeal of photography is looking at images one by one, when editing is involved, a flow and structure are born. Compiling them into a single book creates the joy of perceiving that entire flow.

For me, expressing through photography and creating a photobook are entirely different tasks. I also enjoy doing the layout myself, so I provide as many ideas for the book design as possible. A book is a mysterious object that makes you want to keep it. When I look back at my own photobooks years later, I often notice the essential message of the photos for the first time. Leaving my work in the form of a photobook feels a bit like a time capsule.

When I'm making a book, I can't make a decision unless I have a reason within myself for every choice of photo, placement, and design. However, there are also things that remain where I think, "I don't understand the logic, but this is it!" It's important to leave these incomprehensible parts. When I create my next work and look at the previous one with a different sensibility, I might have an objective realization like, "Maybe this is what it meant." That's when I might realize a sense of self that I hadn't noticed before, thinking, "Maybe I am this kind of artist."

That's true. On the other hand, if you only pursue creation, then "life = creating." If these two get too close, it becomes difficult to maintain mental balance. If you integrate yourself too much with your work, the pain when what you've created isn't understood or is criticized becomes immense.

Actually, when "BEST BEFORE" was completed, I felt that among the canvases surrounding me, the canvas of "photography in commercial work" didn't have much margin left for new additions.

Every photo was created through collaboration with various people. Each time, I intended to change the way I painted, the materials, and the tools, but as a result, I felt I had painted everything I could in terms of photographic expression in commercial work.

Currently, I am working on MVs and other productions alongside making a photobook to be published next year. For about six months after publishing "BEST BEFORE," I spent time watching movies I wanted to see and reading books I wanted to read as a reward to myself, but I had an instinctive feeling that once I had input, I had to output.

Recently, I find creating video more interesting, perhaps because more people are involved than in photography. Because there are many things I don't know, there are conflicts and a lot of struggling, but I also feel like I'm once again challenging the "experiment of life" that I felt when I first started photography.

Creating things is a task within communication with people. The reason input is necessary is not so much to lead directly to output, but to use seeing what someone else has created as an auxiliary line for communication. Within input, there is the premise that people are creating things together.

Yes. When I was in middle and high school, I watched MTV a lot. From the early 90s to the early 2000s, I was stimulated by works created by directors with strong artistic identities, such as Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and Jonathan Glazer, who were later called the MTV generation. It was interesting to catch glimpses of the creator's ingenuity through the direction.

But the trigger for actually starting to make films with Takeuchi-kun and our high school friends was Koki Mitani's work. Do you remember, Takeuchi-kun?

That's right. Also, I think it was significant that our Japanese teacher, Mr. Yasuo Omori, showed us a sitcom called "HR" starring Shingo Katori that was broadcast late at night. I was shocked by how cool it was that there was someone who thought out a play so meticulously, and yet didn't appear in it himself!

Influenced by that, we also made one-room sitcoms. One of them was a collection of short stories called "Wasshoi!" where we set up several fictional club activities and compiled what happened in those club rooms into five stories totaling about 30 minutes. We even entered it into competitions.

Perhaps it was "Wasshoi!" winning the Grand Prix at the Eiga Koshien (High School Film Championship). I believe we filmed "Wasshoi!" during summer vacation. We couldn't get permission to film in a classroom, so we filmed in the club building in Mamushidani. About ten of us were sweating in a stuffy club room at an all-boys school. It was fun, but if you ask if I want to go back to those days...

I continued to make "one-room" pieces in high school, and in university, I filmed a feature-length slapstick comedy called "Panic Comic" set in a manga artist's office. Looking back, I've been doing the same thing all along (laughs).

I think elements of humor are included in both my video and photography. In the case of photography, people tend to think there is no narrative because it captures a single moment, but if you pursue images that make people feel what happened before and after that moment, you can achieve expressions even more eccentric than in video. I think the "funny" elements of comedy that I was obsessed with in middle and high school remain as a sense of humor, like "it would be interesting if this happened."

In that respect, the new MV I'm making right now is very much like me. I feel an exhilaration that I might finally be able to challenge expressions that Japanese people have been particularly bad at until now.

Recently, I'm often given complete creative control. Of course, through repeated dialogue, I might receive requests like "I want to do this here."

When I first started working in photography and video, my proposals rarely went through and I was always being scolded by those around me, but after five or six years, people gradually started to understand my intentions. Once a common understanding is established, the opportunities to be given control increase, which in turn has become a battle with myself.

This is because, before that, when I tried to create something that surpassed my previous work, the person I disagreed with was someone else. In those cases, I would reflect on what the other person was thinking when they said that, or whether I was making assumptions based on my own experience. As those conflicts gradually disappear, the person I talk to becomes myself. However, it's hard to grow that way, so now I try to head toward places where I can take on new challenges.

For example, what I'm working on now is filmmaking. Since I'm still a newcomer with no works in the world of commercial film, it's taking years to write the script, and the people around me just won't nod their heads. It's very frustrating, but I also feel that I'm happier if this state continues.

That said, considering that I will continue to create for the next 50 years, I'll be thinking every morning, "What should I do with that scene?" It's not that it's not fun, but the process of creating is truly difficult. I'm grateful to receive requests, but I also think, "Am I going to experience that feeling again?"

But it's much more painful when I create something safe. That's just a waste of physical strength and time. In those moments, I find myself thinking, "What is my life?" After all, I believe that life is about facing things seriously and encountering emotions you didn't know. My theme is how many emotions I can encounter by engaging with many people and facing others before my life ends.

After receiving an explanation from the designer, Maiko Kurogouchi, about the thoughts behind the collection, I tried to feel and express the fundamental things that influenced her in the same way.

For the Fall/Winter 2021 collection themed "Windows," I created images after reading Toshiyuki Horie's "The Bewildering Window," which was the source of inspiration. It was inspired by a passage about Andrew Wyeth's work titled "Geranium." For the Spring/Summer 2022 collection video themed "Fog," I went to see the scenery in Kurogouchi-san's hometown in Nagano and went to a temple to listen to sutra chanting. No matter what kind of video I create, I try not to deviate from the designer's message and to ensure that the fundamental communication is correct.

Digital has the advantage of being able to see the photos you've taken immediately, but it also has the disadvantage of causing you to stare only inside the frame and become obsessed with the things being captured. Human vision is not square, so if you exclude other possibilities outside the frame, you end up not seeing the raw events happening in front of you.

Since the temperature of the shooting location is not conveyed through the page, I think photographers shouldn't judge what they want to convey based on the atmosphere of the moment. In that regard, film allows you to look back in a calm state because of the time involved in development. It's technically possible to reproduce the same effect as film with digital, but to me, that doesn't matter. The important thing is "what you want to shoot." The same goes for choosing equipment; I might use a tripod to shoot what I'm aiming for, or I might shoot with an instant camera.

Editing is the key to video, so digital is more suitable. Since it's difficult to share the image in my head with a large staff, I value having a common understanding of what we are aiming for right now. This is because it leads to the strength of the finished product. Video sets take time, so if anxiety builds up, it becomes difficult to draw out the appropriate direction. In that respect as well, I feel digital is more suitable for video.

First of all, I explain earnestly how attractive I find the work. I think it's important for the people involved to enjoy themselves and actively want to make it better. To that end, even on sets with many people, I have everyone introduce themselves before shooting and try to remember each person's name as much as possible. Making sure everyone has a sense of participation. And then, no matter what kind of predicament we're in, I try to look like I'm having fun.

On the contrary, I try to enjoy those situations too. Then the staff might think, "Well, this guy seems to be having fun anyway, so I guess I'll help him out," and they might respond to difficult requests. Without that kind of thing, miracles don't happen on set.

Yes. I've been preparing for about six years, but I'm struggling because I can't seem to get a script I'm satisfied with.

I create up to the plot and original idea, and I had a screenwriter join me in the process of turning that plot into a long plot. I've been repeatedly meeting with the screenwriter and producer, refining it to see how it can be improved. Now, I'm finally at the stage of adding dialogue.

Paradoxically, I hope to see more works created for a small number of people, driven by the strong feelings and enthusiasm of the few people at the center of production who desperately want to convey something. I believe that such things are what ultimately reach the hearts of many people.

From the MTV videos I used to watch, I could feel the strong desire of the creators, thinking, "I'm making this because I'm sure it's wonderful!" My life was changed by those kinds of things, so I hope to see more of them in the future, and I want to continue creating such works myself.