Dreaming of Japan

The stay-at-home orders and restrictions on travel during the Covid pandemic led me to revisit and work on older photographs I had taken. In particular, I found myself drawn to images from many trips to Japan made over the course of thirty years, some of which I had never processed or printed. The result of this effort was “Dreaming of Japan,” a series that reflected how much I miss travel to that country, and more generally, my yearning for a life where we will feel able to travel safely and freely again, go places we have never been before, and return to places we long to see once more. With their sometimes dream-like quality, the images are intended to convey the feeling of how unreal and distant a return to “normal” life has seemed. I also came to realize that as I was working on these images I was creating an homage to some of the great Japanese photographers of the mid to late 20th century that I admire so much.