(I met you) In a Dream
(Je t'ai rencontré dans) un rêve
2023
Cyanotype handprint/ toning
ARCHES AQUARELLE 300g/m2
ARCHES AQUARELLE 300g/m2
Gender liberation has been progressing. Japan has been very behind in this due to its cultural background, but the theme is gender for middle-aged men (me) from a different perspective from the world's movement.
I was a male sibling, so I didn't know much about women. I probably have been preoccupied with images, and I think I have selfishly applied myself to the categories of graceful, demure, fragile, sublime, sexual object, emotional, something to be gentle with, pushed around, greedy, and assertive. In addition, having lived almost all of the Heisei era as a corporate person, I had to be very careful not to become a sexual harasser or power harasser in keeping with the changing world. The company also created and enforced rules, and I went through dozens of training sessions. Managers, even more so, had to keep their nerve to be rational and avoid it.
I was a male sibling, so I didn't know much about women. I probably have been preoccupied with images, and I think I have selfishly applied myself to the categories of graceful, demure, fragile, sublime, sexual object, emotional, something to be gentle with, pushed around, greedy, and assertive. In addition, having lived almost all of the Heisei era as a corporate person, I had to be very careful not to become a sexual harasser or power harasser in keeping with the changing world. The company also created and enforced rules, and I went through dozens of training sessions. Managers, even more so, had to keep their nerve to be rational and avoid it.
”Do not talk about anything other than work. Must be placed in the back seat. No dinner together. Break up by 10:00 p.m. Do not call women by their first names but by their last names with a "san" prefix. "
Once these rules were established, the very presence of the opposite sex in the workplace became extremely stressful. While these rules may be physically effective in preventing sexual harassment, I felt they were discriminatory and differentiating against women. In short, they are not flat interpersonal relationships. I also thought they impeded the building of those relationships.
Having spent more than a decade in such a situation and kept my distance, I think that I saw women not as "personalities" but as "idealized images of women" within the gender and appearance of "opposite sex," "young," and "cute" and patriarchal gender roles, in other words, as "objects as sexual objects.
For this work, I made cyanotype prints by hand from negatives of portraits of women I had taken, double-exposed and painted, and then toned the prints. This process transforms the portraits into "objects" with weight and texture. And their subjectivity, sensitized by light, disappears as they become the ideal, pictorial images I have created, and finally become my own "objects.
It is only mine, like the woman in my dream.
It is only mine, like the woman in my dream.
ジェンダーの解放が進んできました。日本は文化的な背景でそれがとても遅れていましたが、世の中の動きとは別の視点で、中年男性（私）のジェンダーがテーマです。
私は男兄弟でしたので、女性のことがあまりよくわかっていません。おそらくイメージが先行し、「気品、 おしとやか、もろい、崇高なもの、性の対象、感情的、優しくしなければならないもの、振り回される、欲深い、自己主張が強い」などというカテゴリーに勝手に当てはめてきたと思います。
また、平成時代のほぼ全てを企業人として生きてきた私は、世の中の変化に沿ってセクハラ・パワハラに ならないように異性に対する対応に細心の注意を払う必要がありました。会社もまたルールを作り徹底させ、私は何十回も研修を受けました。管理職はなおさら、理性的にトラブルを回避する神経を保つ必要がありました。
「仕事以外の話はしないこと。車は後部座席に乗せること。二人で会食をしないこと。会合も夜１０時には 解散すること。下の名前で呼ばず、苗字に「さん」をつけること。」
このようにルールが定められると、職場に異性がいること自体が極めてストレスになってくるのです。 これらのルールはセクハラの防止には物理的に効果があるのかもしれませんが、女性差別であり区別だと感じていました。要は、フラットな対人関係ではないのです。また、その人間関係の構築を阻害するものであったように思います。
そのような中で十数年過ごし、距離を置いてきたことで、女性を「人格」ではなく「異性」「若い」「かわいい」という性別と見た目や家父長的な男女の役割の中での「理想化された女性のイメージ」、言い換えると「性的対象としてのモノ」として捉えていたように思います。
この作品「夢の中」は撮り集めた女性のポートレイトを、二重露光や塗料を塗ったネガから手作業で「サイアノタイププリント」を制作し、調色をしました。このように手を加えることで、重さと質感をともなった「モノ」に変化します。そして光によって感光された彼女たちの主体性は、私の作った理想的で絵画的なイメージとなることで消えていき、最終的に私だけの「モノ」になるのです。それは夢の中に出てくる女性のように、唯一私だけの。