"No matter how grand the vision, when a person thinks of something the image that he sees is no more than the trifling and ordinary scene that he is so accustomed to--as one's bedroom." From the artist's statement accompanying the exhibition of SWISS+ In 2007, Nagashima participated in an artists residence program in the Village Nomade of Switzerland and the photographs she made at that time are reproduced in this volume, which are of flowers along with views of her residence and her son. The images were inspired by a set of flower photographs she found in a box of her recently deceased grandfather's home. The photographs in that box were made by her grandmother twenty-five years prior. Nagashima's work is characterized by her documentation of her family. Through the pictures of flowers and her diaristic entries, she has found a new means of creating a document of her family despite the separation of time and distance. Wedged into the pages randomly--not unlike a scrapbook-- are airline tickets, memos, and blank sheets of craft paper. The sense of shuffle and easy re-ordering dispenses with linear narrative in favor of an accidental, open-ended reading. This makes the book's art direction and design are integral components of the project, blending together visual and text elements with found matter. Her diary-style entires are printed on tracing paper and seem to be typed out with a typewriter with keys out of register. The deliberate slowness of the book's aesthetic is the vehicle for presenting the photography.
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