“Only I can face my own reality.
 
And I am the one who creates the most perfect photographic vector towards that reality.
 
Although reality binds me, I will unravel it.
There is no point in living a hundred years.
 
I am made of soul and flesh.
I remain in my photographs.
 
Within their ethical framework, people eat.
 
Sometimes photography eats taboo,
and love hungers for it.
 
Love has no ethics.
 
When love takes control,
photography becomes toxic.”
 
Fumiko Kaneko was someone who always resisted.
 
I encountered her work while making Toxic. It shook my soul profoundly. My vitality responded fiercely to hers; for the first time, I felt fulfilled through resonance with another person. Through Fumiko, I learned the joy of connecting with others by sharing my spirit and flesh.
 
Toxic brings together negatives made between 2005 and 2019 that had never been printed. These unprinted negatives exist in a state of apparent death; their “life” seems to represent my own “life”, lost through the deaths of loved ones.
 
There are no subjects in my work.
My work always concerns the reality before my eyes.
My photographs become one with that reality as it emerges through the camera and becomes visible on paper.
Taking photographs can be a resistance to absurdity.
 
“I believe that even when all phenomena disappear as phenomena, they continue to exist in the eternal existence of all beings.”
 
These were the last words Fumiko wrote in her notebook.
 
My encounter with her resonated intensely within me. Through it, my lost “life” and the apparently dead negatives revived. Such embodiment moves me deeply. Fumiko's words truly continued to exist in the eternal existence of all beings. This reality encouraged my photography; with my “life” restored, I expressed my dedication and commitment to it.
 
Kaneko Fumiko: born in 1903, she was a Japanese nihilist prosecuted for high treason who died in prison at twenty-three.
 
In dark, desire-filled, searching photographs, Japanese artist Hideka Tonomura examines love, its taboos and its absurdities. As in her earlier photobooks mama love and die of love, the act of photography itself seems to become part of the pictures. Her exploration of love is inseparable from her medium: subjects pose and sometimes look directly into the camera. Although not strictly self-portraiture, Toxic also seems to explore the photographer's own self within the images.