Masahisa Fukase's Love Letter to Yōko Wanibe
Fukase's photography, characterized by their grainy, impressionistic quality, speaks about mourning and a love, lost. He's known prominently for his collection: "From Window"/"窓から" (available at Les Rencontres d' Arles) of obsessive photographs of his second wife, Yōko Wanibe.
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Although the photographs were ostensibly romantic, with each new piece pushing and pulling Yōko out of his grip, his pieces reflected a man’s all-consuming love and the destructive tendencies which followed as a result of his deluded expression of love. As Yōko herself said, “He has only seen me through the lens... I believe that all the photographs of me were unquestionably photographs of himself” and their relationship was filled with “suffocating dullness interspersed by violen[ce] and near suicidal flashes of excitement".
Their relationship fell apart after 13 years of marriage (ending the collection), leaving Fukase to grapple with his ineffable sadness, as Yōko was convinced he was with her solely for the purpose of his craft. With this, his muse shifted from Yōko to ravens, symbolic of his inner turmoil as well as loss and divine intervention’s ill omen in Japanese culture. “Ravens”/“鴉” offers an interesting glimpse into his psyche during the years following the divorce, a testament of his enduring grief and loss.
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Fukase's pernicious behavior was a direct result of the seemingly mellifluous misapprehension he created for himself. Though I believe he was capable of loving, a man whose heart truly lies immersed in his art can never fully give it away. An artist is always compelled to choose between their craft and their cynosure, and a man is always compelled to choose the path of isolated pleasure.
Fukase,
Kanazawa, 1977
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