“Scars generally carry a rather negative connotation. They are not shown to others, not exhibited in public, and are to be kept quietly hidden away, or measures are taken so that they won’t be seen - they belong to an extremely private realm. I take photographs of such scars, which are so very like a personal secret.

Illness, Injury, accidents, war. These re all distressing, painful, unhappy experiences that one day, suddenly befall a person. While a person hopes to remain unblemished through life, we must all sustain and live with wounds, visible and invisible. Running fingers over the smooth flesh, the encounter of some irregular coarseness, an unevenness of sensation, will tell you of the presence of a scar. It is an imprint of the past, welded onto a part of the body.”

——from Miyako Ishiuchi’s afterword

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