Moments in Love

It was about half a year ago when Mr. Takaso from VELVET approached me about this shoot. One day I went to his store, and while we were having a casual conversation as usual, we talked we’d like to go to buying trip to America together and have a road trip-like shoot. It was all started there. I haven’t expected that we actually went there at that time, so when I met up with him, we haven’t talked about that and I was spending my daily time as usual. After months passed, I got an email from Mr. Takaso. It was about a trip to America. “I’m going to America for buying next month. Let’s go on a road trip together and shoot the trip, then make a photo book.” To be honest, I wasn’t serious about it, so I was surprised and at the same time quite happy. During having many meetings about the road trip and the shoot, we decided what would we do there and our direction; We will hunt local people as models, and ask them to wear clothes which Mr. Takaso selected and bought then I photograph them, because it would be boring if I just go with him and Mr. Takaso just do buying. In addition to that, I take street snaps there as I’m normally doing and mix all together in the photo book. No one knows which models wearing VELVET clothes nor which is the real street snaps. It’s a road trip photo book, but we decided that we wanted to create a new way of showing fashion. After leaving Japan and we got to San Francisco. Once I breathed in the cool air outside, all of a sudden, I had a flashback to my life in America, and it made me feel emotional. When I made the decision to return to Japan from New York, I remember that there was a part of me that hated America a little, and a part of me that still couldn’t give up on my life in New York. I felt a rush of regret and the feeling that I had left things I wanted to do unfinished in those days. Mixed with that feeling, my happiness and excitement at being able to return to America caused my emotions to increase. We drove in both San Francisco and Los Angeles by car. At first, we couldn’t get a sense of the distance at all with driving, and all the photos I took felt so far away that it didn’t feel right. I forced Mr. Takaso to stop at the locations I wanted to photograph or had him stop the car suddenly, and tried to move closer and further away from the subjects. Through repeated trial and error, I struggled to find my rhythm. It took 6 hours to drive from San Francisco and Los Angeles by car. While we were driving, we started talking about what the title of this photo book should be, and we sat in silence for a while to think about it. While looking out the car window and listening to the music playing on the radio, the song “Moments in love” by Art of Noise came on. At that time, I realized what this trip means – I release the shutter at the moments I like and Mr. Takaso pick clothes he likes at the moments he find them. “Moments in love”. I thought this song perfectly matched the theme of this trip and our sensibilities. The title for this photo book was named at that moment. I may have been unconscious, but ever since I decided on the title of my photo book, I felt that the path that had been a little vague became completely clear to me. This is it. I mean, I wasn’t wrong. After the trip was over and breathed in the hot and humid air of Japan, I realized that I had done everything. There were no regrets I’ve felt anymore. I finally got to like America.

September 25, 2022 E-WAX