Kei
Ito

Sungazing

This piece is a photo based art installation that expresses the strong connection between the Sun and my family history. On August 6th 1945, at 8:15 AM, my grandfather witnessed a great tragedy which destroyed nearly everything in Hiroshima. He survived the bombing, yet he passed away from cancer when I was 10 years old. I remember him saying that day in Hiroshima was like hundreds of suns lighting up the sky. Both the sheet prints and scroll are made by exposing the photographic paper to sunlight. The pattern of the scroll corresponds to my breath. It was captured by pulling the paper to expose it to the sun while I inhaled, and pausing whenever I exhaled. I repeated this act until I breathed 108 times.

If the black parts of the print remind you of a shadow, it is the shadow of my breath, my breath, which is itself a registration of my life, a life I share with and owe to my grandfather. The mark of the atomic blast upon his life and upon his breath was passed on to me, and you can see it as the shadow of this print.