Daido MoriyamaHOKKAIDO (SIGNED)

(...) When I arrived in Sapporo in June, it was so cold that the light purple clusters of lilac in the alleys and under the eaves were trembling in the cold air. While other parts of Japan had entered the rainy season, here the wind just kept blowing for days on end, and the streets and avenues were tinted white instead. Keeping the promise that I had firmly made to myself, I grabbed my camera every morning and took to the streets, with the regularity of an office worker, and no intention to meet any friend or acquaintance. I spent most of these three months on my own. Other than the very basic daily conversations – buying a ticket at the station, ordering a coffee, or making the occasional phone call – I was just keeping my mouth shut. I soon ran out of sleeping pills, and as I didn’t drink, all I could do was spend the long nights reading books. The daily photo shootings weren’t really fruitful, and there I was, sitting in my freezing apartment, at my wit’s end with my progressing mix of depersonalization, aphasia and insomnia. So as, in other words, my lifestyle was from the very onset based on that fawning, illusional idea of escape and isolation, my only justification that was taking photographs, was easily reversed from the true intention that it used to be, to mere pretense. Those days of feeling guilty went by one after another, and before the summer ended, I decided to go back to Tokyo. At the end of the day, I haven’t made any progress whatsoever, but what I do have, as a proof of my endless walks to miscellaneous places, are 250 used rolls of film.
– from afterword by Daido Moriyama