Hitoshi Fugo is a mature photographer now in his late seventies. He lives in Tokyo. Fugp tends to work in sequences–a series of individual images that commonly relate to an overhanging theme. In KAMI, as discussed in the interview below, Fugo came across a partially burnt roll of paper in the street: the damage came from a fire in a printing company in which the paper has been stored. Inspired by the remarkable textures the fire generated in the paper roll, Fugo set out to create a photographic series that emphasized texture through an intense focus on the damage done to the paper. At times, indeed, the focus was so close as to establish something unreadable, entirely abstract. The strength of KAMI lies in Fugo’s transformation of a humble industrial material into something explosively poetic; the photos conveyed a physical damage, intensified by their oblique physical distress, that took on metamorphic qualities. The object became more or less humanized, or stood for human properties. The interview investigates Hugo’s outstanding transformation of casual damage into a vividly realism with human attributes.

Please describe the beginnings of your life as a photographer. Did you study the discipline in school or did you learn as an apprentice to a master? You have said that your parents did not practice art; why did you turn to photography?

My father once aspired to become a painter when he was young, but he gave it up to make a living. After the war, he ran a camera store in Yonezawa City of the northern Tohoku Region of Japan. When I was five or six years old, he gave me a toy-like camera and I started taking photographs, just playing with it for fun. When I was a teenager studying at local junior and senior school, my father took me to art exhibits at museums, including those in Tokyo. This is how I grew up, eventually becoming familiar with art.

I majored in photography at Nihon University in Tokyo, but I had very little opportunity to study photography there; the university was locked down mostly during my years at Nihon, due to the violent students’ rioting in the late 1960s. After graduating, I began working as an apprentice to Eikoh Hosoe at his studio in Tokyo.

Only after I started working for Mr. Hosoe did I encounter photography as an art form. I then began to make my own fine art photography.

In 1973, you left Japan to work as a freelance photographer in Paris and New York. What was your life like in those two cities? How did your experiences affect you as a photographer in Japan?

Taking assignments from Japanese magazines, in Paris and New York, I worked on my Floating Around series. The two cities, and Tokyo as well, have their own distinct personalities, each being different from the others. My work in Paris and New York exposed me to new cultures–lights and sounds I had not seen in Tokyo. It is likely my experiences discovering the New World have enabled me to acquire a multilayered and compound perspective. I was truly impressed, amazed, and almost envious when I found out museums in Paris and New York commonly acknowledged photography as an important art form.

The word “kami” in Japanese can mean “paper” or, in the Shinto religion, “deity,” is the title of your remarkable ongoing photo project, which began in 2001  and  continues  still:  in  2022,  you re-photographed earlier images of the burnt roll of paper you found by chance on the street in Tokyo.

The KAMI series began in 2001 but it hasn’t been quite finished yet. A while ago, I came up with the image of the burnt roll of paper engulfed in flames while looking at it in my studio, which should end this project. However, I struggled to find a location to set up burning it, and other projects pushed me to postpone reshooting for several years. When I finally found a suitable location, Ms. Yoshinaga offered me an exhibition of this KAMI series, which prompted me to move forward. Unfortunately, capturing the engulfed image ended in failure. But, in the process of preparing for the exhibition, I took several new images. I would try again for the engulfed image, and if I manage to photograph it, I can wrap up this series.

Please describe the details of “Kami” and its creation?. How many photographs are in the series? What was it about the four-foot-high roll of paper, partially burned in a fire, that inspired you to start the project? Is there a particular sequence to the present

31 photos, 11 of which were shown at Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery? Why do you continue to make photos of the damaged paper?

In 1994, I found a partially burnt roll of paper at a site destroyed by fire, which I kept for a long time in my studio. In 1995, there was a disastrous earthquake in the western part of Japan: the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. After I went there and photographed the damaged areas, I felt I could express my feelings and thoughts regarding the catastrophic destruction by photographing the roll of burnt paper. So, sitting in my studio in 2001, I began shooting.

The series is almost completed–but not quite entirely. I will continue to work on it until I feel it is finally completed.

For my recent exhibition at Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery in New York City, I made new prints for 31 images in the series. Eleven of the images were exhibited in the gallery show. When I complete the series, I want to publish a photobook; it is likely, then, that more images will occur in the sequence.

Regarding the concept behind the KAMI series, I would say I am taking on a photographic challenge, namely, the elimination of the attributes and meaning of the subject. Working this way, I feel I can open a new horizon in conventional photography. In my earlier series, Flying Frying Pan, I attempted to dismantle the information attributed to a frying pan and the general idea attached to it. By shooting and printing a frying pan in certain ways, I was able to achieve an abstract image that makes it impossible for viewers to recognize the image as a frying pan.

For my KAMI series, I photographed the partially burnt roll of paper, which was four feet in height and one and a half feet in diameter. I also cut and chopped the paper roll with a chainsaw. Because of the additional forces applied to the roll, its visual existence became detached, having been made abstract–the paper’s original utilitarian state was lost to view. For me, this project was an experiment to see how the roll of paper might be transformed, changing its appearance as it went through progressive stages of destruction,. Each image created is meant to provide an impression establishing an analogy for the violence innate in human nature. The photo-sequence can also demonstrate an independent beauty, in which the object breaks free of human control, even suggesting the non-existence of God.

Can it be said that the KAMI images suggest an abstract narrative? How do you see the project–as essentially abstract or figurative–especially when the images are quite difficult to recognize as paper? Does the viewer’s difficulty in understanding what he sees necessarily mean that the photograph’s attraction is abstract alone? Some of the images feel like you organized them yourself–if this is true, how did you change the papers’ shape and arrange it as a material to create the images you have?

My basic idea is that photography is not just about copying the subject as it is. The way I approach the subject changes depending on the series.

The «KAMI» series is meant to be abstract, but not in a superficial sense. The series is not composed solely of abstract images, making it difficult to recognize paper as paper

I focus on its destruction process, and some of the images show the shape and texture of the paper, while others are abstract and make it difficult to understand what was photographed. You can feel the beauty in both the roll paper as a concrete object that is partially burned and its thoroughly degraded state, which makes it unrecognizable as a paper at all.

The process of my shooting can be compared to an improvisation in jazz. I briefly premeditate a prototype image as I violently cut the rolled paper with a chainsaw. The resulting images are sometimes close to or sometimes turned away from what I had imagined. There are a few pieces that I consciously composed according to a particular concept. Sometimes, I reconstruct them so that they would more effectively show beauty. Thus, in a process, the paper roll’s single identity controlled by a human is eventually erased.

I have never found it difficult to handle the roll paper.  Even if it becomes brittle and breaks while moving it, that is also part of the improvisation. However, this type of paper roll was huge and heavy, so shooting it was hard.

These are very dark-toned photographs. Is the lack of light a technical choice or a thematic comment or both? 

I photographed all of the images in this series with the same light source: a strobe in my studio. The reason for using a strobe is that the light is momentary (around 1/10000th of a second, although this varies depending on the type of strobe), so it doesn’t cause camera shake. This allows for sharp images. Also, unlike photographic light bulbs, strobes don’t generate much heat, so the studio doesn’t get too hot. Depending on how you use the strobe, you can create stronger contrast or more dramatic images. This means that you can achieve anything depending on how you assemble the strobe lighting. For the lighting of the «KAMI» series, I tried to distribute the light so that the subject would look three-dimensional and the dark areas wouldn’t be crushed. I adjust the dark areas and contrast when printing.

I did not intend to make all the photos dark. Rather, I chose a tone most appropriate for each image. I chose dark tones for some of the photographs when I wanted to emphasize the beauty and fragility of materials or offer a glimpse into the dark side of human nature.

I believe I can deliver my message only by making a series with a sequence of images, not by offering a single image. Many photographers from different cultures think the same way.

Also, you tend to work in series–why? Many photographers from different cultures work similarly. Why is that so?

To tell the truth, maybe I should concentrate on one series a little more. Each series takes so long because I’m working on several series simultaneously. Also, my goal is to compile them into a book. If I don’t have a chance to publish them, I would want to add new images and end up reshooting a series that I’ve left untouched for years. But I feel like this inclination has given my work more layers and depth, although I think that work that has been continued for a long time is not necessarily excellent.

Do you feel that there is a specific meaning to KAMI?

Is it saying too much that the burned paper refers, in distant fashion, to the historical traumas of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Or is this comment an over-reading of your motive? Does the texture of these remarkable photos, which forms a major part of their beauty contribute to a pessimistic reading of the art?

I produced this series, conscious of destructions caused by natural threats and man-made destructions such as war. But I never connected this body of work to the tragedies of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The texture highlighted in my work is not meant to be pessimistic. Although this series may evoke such feelings, it should also offer a sense of beauty; a kind of beauty that can be found even in a burnt roll of paper. I can see beauty in any object, even those destroyed or no longer worth any use.

Is it fair to say that in addition to KAMI, much of your photography hovers between abstraction and figuration. If your work is neither non-objective nor realist, why did you decide not to work in one style or another? What do you gain by putting out work that moves in neither direction?

I change my photographic methods or styles depending on what I intend to express. I don’t stick to just one style. For my other series, such as “BLACKOUT” and “Floating Around, “I photographed specific objects matter-of-factly. From there, however, abstracted images emerged, moving away from a sense of documented, actual objects. By eliminating the object’s relations to its original attributes and erasing its particular space and time, I can free myself from photography’s documentary nature. Only then can I express my inner world, even liberating myself from the present time, where I exist. In the Flying Frying Pan and KAMI series, I focused specifically on what it is to liberate the object from its attributes and the space it exists in. I made one series titled AKI/CHI, for which I straightforwardly photographed specific subjects in specific locations.

Please name two or three other works important to your career. Tell your readers what their themes are. How might they compare to Kami?

From early on in my career, I have been striving to express an abstract world through photography. How can I escape from one of photography’s missions, which is to record the subject? I feel like I got a lot of inspiration from surrealist paintings, especially from the works of Rene Magritte. Each object in the painting is realistic, but it can express a different dimension. I thought that photography could do that too.

I can talk about two important works I created before the KAMI series.

The «BLACKOUT» series (1972-1996) consists of more than sixty images shot in black and white in various locales and situations while I was traveling in Japan, India, and the United States. The style of «BLACKOUT» is not surrealistic. Although each image captures photographed subjects, I believe this series enables a transition from the real world to an abstract world. In addition, «BLACKOUT» is an important work because it gave me the confidence that I could express my inner world through successive and overlapping images, just like writing a novel with a series of words. Just as different architects can achieve completely different spaces and shapes even if they use similar building materials, I believe that my work should demonstrate the shape of a structure, not just a stream of sequence.

When I exhibited «BLACKOUT» for the first time in 1982, I realized this work was not understood. One critic praised it as a new form of “Indian” photography, which was an utterly misguided statement. Suppose you cannot escape from thinking about what is photographed, when, and where; rather than reading the work itself, “BLACKOUT” is then a frustrating work that is difficult to understand because these attributes are not explicit. This experience triggered my next creation of the “Flying Frying Pan” series (1979-1994).

Just because it is a photograph does not mean that a frying pan needs to be photographed as a frying pan. A single frying pan (in my kitchen) can produce a completely different image when photographed in close-ups or various other ways. I made over seventy images for the series. The «Flying Frying Pan» series is important because it ultimately proved my idea that it is possible to free oneself from the documentary nature of photography. I do not know whether this series has changed how people interpret “BLACKOUT,” but I think it has expanded the scope of my photographic expression.

If I had not created these two series, the «KAMI» series would never have been born.

You have traveled and worked in the West. Do you see a genuine difference in the photos taken in the West and the work done in Japan? If so, please describe how they are different.

Maybe the two paragraphs for Answer Ten could be expanded.

For the AKI/CHI series, I took shots only in Tokyo because the series itself was about Tokyo, where I live. Most of my other work offers abstract images, so the shooting location doesn’t really matter.

I have traveled and photographed not only in the West but also in India and other parts of Asia. And, again, the location does not matter when I work on creating a series.

You are mature enough as a photographer to see major developments in the technology of cameras, printing, papers, etc. How have these changes affected the way you make work?

It looks like film, photographic paper, and film cameras will no longer develop or even be manufactured in the future. Since photography is becoming almost entirely digital, I can only hope that the quality of both film and photographic paper will not deteriorate. ¶

Digital technology will continue to develop, leading to new ideas and expressions in photography. Myself is currently in the process of making a new series, applying a new method using digital cameras.

I am not particular about silver gelatin prints or rejecting digital at all. They both give me a different option. The «Body and Horizontal Bar» series I am developing will continue to be shot on film and printed with silver gelatin. On the other hand, I will use digital prints for work that can only be done with digital cameras. I don’t know how many more years I can continue to create works, but I will use both media until the end.

Can you prophesize about the future of Japanese photography? Where do you think it will go? Will it become more international, as so much art has become, or will it remain Japanese in content?

We will undoubtedly see Japanese photographers working with digital photography, which conveys both original expressions independent of Japanese influence and elements that are recognizably part of Japanese culture. But I also believe we will see Japanese fine art photographers working in a style foregoing Japanese qualities. This style, brand new, will allow artists to break free from conscious cultural considerations. Thus, the idea of specifically Japanese, Asian, or Western influences will no longer matter.

Readers wishing to learn more about the KAMI or other photographic sequences may contact Miyakp Yoshinga,   who   curated   the   show   at   her　gallery–email: miyako@miyakoyoshinagallery.com

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