SPOTLIGHT: EIKI MORI, PHOTOGRAPHER, JAPAN

PHOTOGRAPH: Eiki Mori

Japanese boys seem so neat and polite. They look so sexless on the surface. But if you look closely it’s a different story. I like exploring that contradiction in my photographs.

I was born and raised in Kanazawa, right in the middle of Japan. At the time it was a very traditional and conservative city. I realised I was gay in high school. Around
the same time my father gave me one of his old 35mm cameras. In those teenage years I felt a sense of struggle, and feelings of loneliness and alienation which still
motivate me. I think I am trying to release those memories into my photographs.

My work tends to juggle three themes, Tokyo, where I now live, boys, and intimacy. I don’t feel I have a particular message to communicate, but eroticism is one of the key elements of my work. I want people to connect with it through their sexuality. However, in my photos I also strive to reflect the true image of my subjects – I try to capture their souls. At the same time attempting to express myself through the model. Each image is like a self-portrait. That’s perhaps why I mostly focus on photographing Tokyo’s boys, for the similarities I feel with them.

The people I photograph are usually my friends or acquaintances, but sometimes,when I see boys that I like, I approach them directly – at a café or in the street. And sometimes people who are interested in being photographed contact me by email. I’m interested in moving images too. As well as the photographers Walter Pfeiffer and Hervé Guibert, one of my main influences is the queer film director Gregg Araki, and I hope to make a short film this year. But something that draws me to photography is that I find it the most momentary medium. You can’t repaint an image like an oil painting or rewrite it like a novel. In a photograph, you puteverything into one moment and you can set that moment to last forever.

I make my living by contributing to music, design and art magazines, and I try to publish a book every year. Sometimes people from abroad want to purchase some of my prints which rarely ever happens in Japan. I spent some time studying in New York, and learned my attitude to work there. It felt that everyone had a big dream and was working hard towards it. I try to have that kind of spirit and work hard. It was an interesting place to be gay. I met a lot of nice people and some of them are still very close to me. My time there also made me realise that although there seems to be a lot of crossover between our two cultures, in fashion, music and technology, there are still big differences. I think Japanese people will
always have their own culture. I love living in Tokyo. It’s clean, safe, convenient – a really nice city. Although sometimes it can feel perhaps a little bit too nice!

Today, I believe I’m living in a state of half-freedom. I’m out to my family. I came out to my older sister in 2000 and to my parents last year. I love taking portraits of boys in Tokyo. I photograph and present my work almost freely, I am happy with my boyfriend and enjoy my life. But I am only open with my immediate circle of friends and relatives. I want to be able to live with a smile. To be able to express anything I want through my work. These things are freedom to me.

I think we should keep striving for the rest of the society to finally accept homosexuality as something that is regular so that future generations can have the full freedom we never had. There are places in the world where the need to define yourself as gay may have passed. But not here. Not yet. We are still a minority, we have to join forces to win rights equal to those that straight people enjoy.

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