Yoshikatsu Fujii: “Incipient Strangers” – Photographying Family’s Internal Conflicts

Yoshikatsu Fujii is a photo-based visual storyteller working on long-form projects about memory, family, contemporary events, and history. His main medium is a hand-made limited edition photobook. His books have been nominated for the Paris Photo Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards 2014.

Japan – 

Siblings can be incipient strangers. Even siblings sharing the same blood can become distant and turn into strangers to each other as they each grow and forge their own path in life. Sometimes, we fail to hit it off with friends and eventually lose touch. But with family, no matter how brittle the relationship, it cannot be severed. This makes things even more difficult.
With family, we take liberties to say harsh words and give unwanted advice. With family, we have the sense that our actions will mostly be permitted, and we end up creating an irreparable rift. Had this accretion of incidents caused my parents’ divorce? Since coming to see things that way, I decided to try looking at my family as strangers.
That meant not standing on formality, but taking pains to consider the other party and work around their needs. If my family were total strangers to me, how would they react if I did such and such? I asked myself these questions and endeavoured to avoid unnecessary meddling.
In my honest experience, this approach does not feel as if one is truly valuing the other’s existence, and there was something unpleasantly awkward about it. However, the process made me realize that everyone in a family has the same internal conflicts and faces each other with this set of contradictions. This struggle creates each person’s image of what that family is. It was through this process that I at last began to see, for the first time, something like the start of our family.


Photography & Written by Yoshikatsu Fujii

Related Posts

Ren Hang

THIS STORY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT China – Photographer and poet, Ren Hang was born in Changchun, in northeast China in …

Ines Dumig Apart Together

Ines Dumig: “Apart Together” – Regaining the lost Identity

Germany –  According to the International Organisation of Migration, there are over 200 million migrants worldwide and the geographic region …

Richland : Gustavo Jononovich

Argentina – On behalf of “progress” we have transformed our environment into the lifeblood of our economy. Everything we manufacture …

Diana Matar: “Evidence” – Photographing Six years of Political Disappearance

Libya –  Years ago Photography feature –  Diana Matar‘s father-in-law, a Libyan opposition leader, was kidnapped by the Egyptian secret …

Veejay Villafranca SIGNOS

Veejay Villafranca: “SIGNOS” – Philippines Everyday Survival

Philippines –  “These are images from 2009 up to present following the displacement of communities brought about by the extreme …

Rena Effendi: Liquid Land

Azerbaijan –  “Liquid Land is co-authored with my father Rustam Effendi, a dissident scientist and entomologist who devoted his life …

Vitaly Flomenko Riotbooks

Vitaly Fomenko: Revisionist Soviet Rules of the Road

Russia –   “In the Fall of 2014 the world witnessed with confusion, how, headed by the ambitious adventurer Putin, …

Enfant Terrible – Antoine D’Agata

THIS STORY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT France – French photographer Antoine D’agata’s work is dark, introspective and shockingly bold. A photographer …

Tomasz Lazar: Theater of Life

Poland – In Ancient Greece people were believed to be only actors, playing roles written by powerful gods. Nowadays, mass …