In 2018, early in the New Year, I set about cleaning out my attic. I decided to use the New Year as an opportunity to clear out a pile of long-neglected belongings. However, the real purpose of the cleanup was to find and study the details of Christine-related items.
I was contemplating presenting a "work" by Christine's own hand in a solo exhibition that was scheduled to take place in 2019. I found various objects related to her, some I had already forgotten about their existence and some I had never seen before. In addition to written materials, there was Super 8 film, cassette tapes and pocket camera film.
During the process of studying the found materials in detail, I realized something. That was when I found a slide film of myself standing behind a tripod with a 6 x 7 camera mounted on it at the beach in Izu, my hometown, in 1978. Christine had taken the picture of me with the Leica she was carrying when I photographed her standing at the end of the shore with a camera strapped to her neck, wearing black rubber boots and holding a bamboo pole. I was a little excited, whispering "Face to Face" to myself. As I studied more and more of the photos taken by her pocket camera and the photos she took with her 35mm camera, I discovered that Christine was often taking pictures of me, and we were taking pictures of each other at about the same time. This act of photographing and being photographed continued with varying frequency until the day before Christine took her own life in East Berlin in October 1985.
The portfolio "Face to Face" begins with a photograph of Christine taken in my apartment in Graz on February 28, 1978 and ends with a photograph of Christine with Komyo, taken on October 6, 1985 against the backdrop of Cecilienhof Palace, the site of the so-called "Potsdam Conference" in 1945, where the leaders of the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union discussed the post-war handling of World War II.
The first portfolio was produced in 2020. It contains a total of 150 photos, that is, 75 photos of each other.
All the photos were taken by Christine and Seiichi of each other, with one exception*.
Publisher >>> Chose Commune
