Hiroyuki Ito
Looking at four sad human dramas unfolding in front of my eyes was at least intellectually stimulating. Upon closer inspection, the random movies started to create rhythm of their own both visually and emotionally, as if John Cage was at work behind the screen.
Since my working method in street photography is purely accidental, shuffling images into grids underlines their arbitrariness.
I only supply clues, hoping that each viewer comes up with his or her own detective novel.
—excerpt from New York, New York, New York, New York
Over at the Lens blog, freelance photographer Hiroyuki Ito proffered a rare, refreshing amount of honesty about his creative process.
Often times, when photographers and other artists write about their own work, they tend to veer into the bombastic. Yours truly is guilty of this as well.
But what I like about Ito’s statement is that it frees the viewer to appreciate his images for what they are—brief, mysterious vignettes of life’s random happenstances. It is up to the viewer to decide what other, perhaps deeper, meanings and stories can be gleaned from these collected moments.
For more on Ito, check out this 2009 New York Times feature.
Danielle Scruggs is a photographer and writer currently living and working in Washington, D.C., and Silver Spring, Md. Her work has been exhibited in Baltimore and Brooklyn and published by The Washington Post, Stop Smiling magazine, FILE magazine, and F-Stop Magazine. Scruggs holds an M.A. in Digital Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a B.A. in Journalism from Howard University. She is still very much in love with Charm City, albeit from a distance.