Masayo Nishimura "Crossing the Road" Photography June 22 – July 17, 2021, Ceres Gallery
Artist Note
About a decade ago, I started photographing pedestrians crossing the road in midtown Tokyo whenever I had a chance to visit my native country, Japan.
Initially, it was just spontaneous shooting done out of curiosity. One day, while I was doing the street shots in midtown Tokyo, I found myself on the 4th-floor balcony of a five-story walk-up building located at the corner of the Yotsuya square intersection. The commercial building had open-air terraces on each floor connected by a public stairway, which always seemed empty. I thought it was perfect for observing the people underneath without getting anyone's attention. From that point on, I started taking photographs of pedestrians crossing the road.
After developing the films, I noticed that various dramas were going on within each pedestrian in the fleeting moment between the traffic signal change from green to red. Some looked happy; some looked sad. Some had anxiety written on their faces; others were marked by a nonchalant tranquility. Young couples hold each other’s hands intimately, while older couples hide their faces from the other while talking. An older man with a cane stops midway, while a young man runs through the crowd. Both gasp for breath. Many stare at their phones with a blank expression.
Though they move together, each person is ultimately alone in their own world, just sharing a brief moment on the road. Each person seems to mind their own business and is unaware of the other’s presence. But they all navigate themselves so well without bumping each other, as if, they were magnets avoid between the North and South Pole. Those movements seem like those of rather well-choreographed dancers or actors that flow seamlessly across the stage.
I exhibited a series of these images for the first time in my solo show in February 2012 that caught some critics' attention. After the show, my curiosity grew, and I started taking more of these crosswalk shots. While exploring, I found a pedestrian bridge near the Iidabashi train station in midtown Tokyo. Because I was able to observe pedestrians walking underneath very closely, it became another ideal spot for sneak-shooting. Each time I returned to Japan from 2012 to 2016, I commuted to Iidabashi to photograph.
I was not planning to do another show using these crossing pictures. Then, last spring, while I was trapped in my house in New York during the initial outbreak of COVID-19, I started looking over the shots I had taken before.
While looking through the images, I was struck by each pedestrian’s lively facial and physical expressions as they crossed the intersections. I thought about how much I missed the time when I used to photograph people who were crossing the roads so casually and carelessly, without keeping a distance from each other. I longed for the everyday life that we all once knew.
More than a year later, we still cannot live life normally as we once did, but I feel incredibly fortunate that I was able finish printing these images for my show, something that did not seem feasible not even a few months ago. I want to thank my dear printer and the Japanese pedestrians who encouraged and inspired me throughout the project.
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