Withdraw/Archive > My History: not my self, excerpts

My History: not my self was an installation of xerox transfer prints with an enlarged image of a school photograph of Japanese female students from my father’s photo album. Enlarged to a nearly life size scale, the entire installation covered a 10’x15’ wall. The size of each print is approximately 11”x 15”.

Japanese schools take group photographs of students rather than individual ones. Cultural emphasis is on collective rather than individualism. This image was one of many school group photographs I found in my father’s albums.

I was first intrigued by the striking likeness of the styles and manners that are similar to my own school photographs; uniforms and serious expressions on young faces. But with careful eyes, I began to notice many details. For example, not all the students wore the exact same uniforms at that time due to economic difficulties during the post-war period. Many students wore hand-me-downs.

At my junior high and high school, uniforms were mandatory. Each school designated a store to sell their school uniforms, and no other substitutes were allowed.

While looking at this photograph carefully, I was speculating my own stories about them, wondering how it might have been to grow up at that time. The act of enlarging a photograph to a nearly life size by Xerox meant copying several times, losing the details and sharpness each time it was enlarged. The image became more ambiguous as if memories fade.

For this artists’ book, I used extra prints I had made for an installation. I decided to use three figures. Each sheets are glued and the print is folded in order to fit inside the book cover. To this day, as of April, 2025, the installation has not been shown as an entire format in public. Only the fragments were shown once. I still have all the prints for an installation, and perhaps one day, I get to show them all together.