「オノマトペとしての写真」林祐紀（写真家）
オノマトペの羅列を聴いて思わず頬が緩んでしまうような。森下大輔の「Dance with Blanks」を繙くと、そんな感興に誘われる。
例えば、赤子が口走るキャッとかピャッとか、そういった未成の発語や吃音と戯れる感覚に近いかもしれない。我々は普段、写真を前にしたときに、そこに内在する意味を問題にしてしまうものだが、この作家が措定する空白の領域を前にすると、いつの間にかその空白と共に手を取り合い、リズムをとって踊っている自分自身にはたと気づく。
森下が近年見せている直覚的な対象へのアプローチは、その作品に独特な軽やかさをもたらしているが、この軽やかさは、作家が写真集という単位に拘りながら、自作のあり様を探り続けた結果の一つだろう。
多義的な場の中で作品が帯びる浮力。まるで宙を舞う綿毛のように、いつかそこから言葉が萌すであろう種子をひっそりと鑑賞者へ運ぶ…細やかな声音のイメージと相俟って、埒も無い想像が頭を過る。
「空白と踊る」ということ。「わからないもの」と手を携えるということ。作家の切実な経験を賭して紡がれるこの茫漠とした領域を、我々はしばし目を細め、見つめ続けるしかないようだ。
“Photography as Onomatopoeia” Yuki Hayashi (Photographer)
Daisuke Morishita’s “Dance with Blanks” provides the inspiration same as when listening to an array of onomatopoeia and your cheeks are loosened unintentionally. It is similar to a feeling that you play with unformulated speech or stuttering, such as coughing and purring of an infant. When we face a photograph, we usually question its intrinsic meaning; but when we face a blank that this artist generates, we hold our hands with that blank and dance with the rhythm before we realize it.
Morishita’s recent intuitive approach to a subject has brought a unique lightness to his work. While he produces a series of photobooks obsessively, his continuing effort to explore the concept of his work has produced this uplifting feeling.
The buoyancy that his work sustains in a multidimensional field, like cotton fluff flying in the air, his work carries a seed to a viewer secretly, and it may sprout some words one day. An absurd imagination goes over my head with a touch of finely tuned voice.
“Dancing with Blanks” means to join hands with “something strange.” For a while, we look closely at this expansive space, which the artist has created through his sincere experience, and then we continue to stare at it.