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A dear person, animal, or a familiar view sometimes feels very distant. It's a sense of uncertainty and inviolability that suddenly strikes me like a gust of wind. When it happens, the object is really distant, no matter how close it is to my lens, or even if it smiles at me. I can see it but I can't touch it, as if there is a wall of glass between us. Photography reveals the existence of this glass, albeit quietly. But whether I grasp its nature or not is a whole other question. I can stay tranquil as long as I leave incomprehensibility as it is. This is not a depressive account. It is sad, but there is also a certain brightness in the distances of intimacy.

I don't always have my camera with me, nor do I intentionally go out to "take pictures". Instead, I spend most of my days not taking any photos at all. Most of the pictures in this book were taken before 2018. There are much fewer photos from the middle of 2019 onwards, and there were several reasons for that. I didn't feel like taking photos, or couldn't spare time for it, or the photography didn't seem to fit personal relations. I approve of the days when I didn't take pictures. Sometimes, the moment is gone before you can pick up a camera. That being said, it's not that photography isn't a core part of my life. I'd be incapacitated without my camera!

What did I want to do with this book, I wonder? It's certainly not to keep myself always on the lookout to capture a particular moment, nor to create a setting for ideal pictures. I'm not eagerly pursuing a totally new mode of expression either. I react to scenes which I unavoidably come across in everyday life, such as communicating with others, time that doesn't seem to move, a shadow that sways, or a ray of frozen light. I fix my eyes on them and release the shutter. Is it a record of life? Maybe not.

I feel great interest in and attachment to my childhood memories, as well as the everyday life that I'm living. The former makes a unique album, whereas the latter is for an album-to-be, for which I'm in charge of selecting everything. I choose where to live, what to eat, how to wear and whom to get along with. I could get off the train at an unfamiliar station. I could dance with cats.

Countless choices and experiences create a particular person, one who resembles no one else. Everyone has a collection of unique episodes, and I've been deeply moved by the texture of such episodes that live on in artistic productions such as clothes, movies and music. Although private in origin, they are pliable, they have a certain transferability. The good productions strike a chord in us and show us a vision of the unknown. That is what I want to do with photography.