Dear collectors,

I don't own a lot of photography equipment. As for lenses, I only have a wide-angle lens and a few standard lenses. I have tried many different lenses, but I have ended up using the "standard lens" most of the time, so the majority of the works posted on this webshop were created with them. When you try to take a photo with it, you'll find that it's surprisingly difficult to use. It can't take large pictures of distant objects, and it can't fit everything in the frame indoors. Your cell phone camera is probably easier to use for taking photos of anything. I also actively use my cell phone camera in my daily life and for taking photos of small products. The results are surprisingly excellent. So why do I bother to use a difficult-to-use "standard lens"? It's because it's close to the perspective and field of view that people use to gaze at things. It also gives a natural feeling of depth and background blur. I use the latest high-quality lenses for precise product photography, but for my Photogravure work I often use lenses that are more than half a century old. This is because I like the way the lenses of that time captured light. Today's high-quality lenses far surpass the resolution of the human eye and can reproduce the world with high precision. That's a wonderful thing, but I want to express the world I see and feel with my own (slightly inferior) eyes. Strangely enough, I feel that this is close to the images reproduced by lenses made in the 1950s to 1970s. A lens that allows me to "paint the world I feel" is a wonderful paintbrush for me.

Two years ago, I decided to take a bold 10-day trip to visit two cities. My destinations were Berlin and Portland. I kept my luggage to a bare minimum, only carrying a 25L backpack and a tote bag (no checked baggage!)—so light that customs seemed suspicious. I limited my photography equipment to a Sony α and a single 55mm lens. I wondered if I could capture the images with just this, but the results were good. I didn't have to worry about the angle of view when taking the photos, and I was able to focus straight on the image. Of course, I also took snapshots with my cell phone as a backup, like taking notes, which could be immediately shared with the media, whereas the images taken with a standard lens felt more like sketches I would draw with pen and paper. I once again felt that it was a very stimulating experience to be on the move, jet-lagged, thinking about the new people I was meeting, and calmly capturing images of the fascinating scenery that suddenly appeared before my eyes. If I had been carrying a lot of photography equipment and lenses at that time, I would probably have been overwhelmed by the weight of the equipment and would have been overwhelmed by my choices. A focal length of around 50mm gives me the feeling that I can express my feelings directly towards the subject, which really gets me going. 

This work is a photograph I took at the time of Maximilian Zeitler, a wet plate photographer living in Berlin. I took this photo from the backyard of his studio. At the time, I was suffering from severe jet lag, but I had already formed an image of him holding his camera through the window frame, and all I had to do was calmly press the shutter. A few days later, it was completed as a Photogravure print at Ray Bidegain's studio in Portland Oregon.

This is a photo of the street outside from the living room of the AirBnb where I stayed in Portland. This town is lush with large trees. In addition, the indoor plants in this house were quietly growing and growing freely. I remember my heart being nourished in the early morning light. "Seeing the world through the window." That is the real pleasure of traveling for me. 

For this reason, I shot everything on this trip with just one standard lens. If I had brought lenses with more focal lengths, my photography might have been off-target. And the bulk and weight of the equipment might have made me sick. Traveling with just one lens, directly connected to my optic nerve, is fun. I'd like to take a trip like this again someday.

Yoshio