It has been almost 10 years since I started photographing those who reside in the little corner of the big cities. Through taking photographs, I witnessed a diversity of lifestyles and uniqueness that each space has, with which we rarely have contact in our ordinary daily life.
House. Hut. Bed. Blue poly tarp. Tent. It was confusing to label such living space with the terms that I know of, so I decided to call them “Iori,” which is a small temporary hut. Iori was home to monks or hermits in the old days and is often mentioned in Japanese poetry, Haiku, as a motif that illustrates simple living of Japanese.
As I became acquainted with more of these people and repeatedly photographed them and their Iori while building relationships, the image that I had for the words, “vagabond” and “homeless,” began to collapse.
Seasons and sceneries never stays the same. So too, it is with the world we live in today and bias that we subconsciously hold. Time. Environment. Freedom. Publicness. Existence. All thoughts and philosophies towards such issues appear in turns and starts drifting through my mind.
I have just started to realize that the way I perceive my ordinary daily life is slowly changing.