レンズのイメージサークル
全てを写すために To capture the entire image circle of a lens

Photography, in its essence, produces a circular image.

This realization marked the beginning of the Camera Obscura series, in which an entire hotel room was turned into a dark chamber, capturing exterior landscapes—including the full image circle—across twenty sheets of 8×10-inch film.

During overseas assignments, he would block out all external light in a hotel room and install a single lens in the window, creating a camera obscura. In complete darkness, twenty sheets of film were carefully mounted onto a board, one by one, without misalignment—an extremely demanding process. As anticipated, the resulting images were slightly misaligned.
While his original intention had been to place the film sheets seamlessly, viewing the works today reveals that these subtle shifts enhance the physical presence of the photographs, imbuing them with a tactile quality born of manual labor. The project began in Los Angeles and later continued in Düsseldorf and Singapore.

Following the Camera Obscura series—initiated by a strong desire to break free from the constraints of conventional camera frames—he began a new challenge: capturing the entire image circle within a single sheet of film.

He first sourced 40×40 inch film, then built a camera capable of exposing it, and finally devised a method to develop such large film. After extensive trial and error, this process resulted in the sky and cloud series Photographs “About Clouds / Capturing Sky”. By transforming the attic of his home into a camera obscura and embedding a lens into the roof, he recorded the sky and drifting clouds overhead. “The movement of clouds is surprisingly fast,” he once remarked. The circular form of the image, combined with the ever-changing shapes of clouds, leaves a lasting visual impression.

The next work, “Atomic Bomb Dome“, a work in which the inner walls of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Dome were photographed in a full 360-degree panorama using a 40-inch camera.
The resulting 40×40-inch contact prints on silver gelatin paper retain exceptional resolution and texture, and continue to radiate the lingering brilliance of the final era of silver gelatin printing in the twentieth century.

“I never wanted to do what others were doing. Instead, I consistently pursued photographs that revealed new ways of seeing.”
It may be said that this unwavering attitude ultimately gave rise to the body of work produced with his 40-inch camera—works that capture the image circle in its entirety.