Monument Road
Three summers ago, I was photographing the work and daily routine of agricultural workers. Every morning, I would take a commuter bus along the countryside streets to various work sites. During the roughly two-hour ride, buildings, farmlands, billboards, and other fragments of the landscape kept reappearing outside the car window. These facilities, in different shapes and forms, struck me as exaggerated and unexpected, so with the fantasy of a new scenery in mind, I started walking along the countryside roads.
On the road, I often wondered why a building had been built in a certain way, what kind of character belonged to the owner who had planted a particular plant, whether the billboards were effective, and so on. The appearance of capital and commercial activity crept into every corner of the street. Artifacts such as billboards, plants, and buildings appear to be monuments to the civilian population; they look ordinary, yet seem to reflect the ethos of the place.
In addition, I collected customer reviews from Google Maps for the commercial facilities I passed along the way, along with advertising papers from the local newspaper. These texts and images reminded me of the scenery I saw on the road. In Monument Road, I combined the advertising papers, the reviews in the map app, and the photographs I took to construct my own imagery of the Japanese countryside and late capitalism.
三年前的夏天，我在拍摄农业工人的工作和日常。每天早晨，我都会乘坐通勤车，沿着乡间街道前往不同的工作地点。在大约两个小时的车程里，建筑、农田、广告牌和其他景观碎片不断在车窗外重新出现。这些设施有着不同的形状和样貌，在我看来夸张而出乎意料。于是，带着对一种新风景的想象，我开始沿着乡间道路行走。
在路上，我常常想，一栋建筑为什么会被建成那样，种下某种植物的主人有着怎样的性格，广告牌是否真的有效，等等。资本和商业活动的外观渗入街道的每一个角落。广告牌、植物、建筑这些人工物像是属于平民的纪念碑；它们看起来普通，却似乎反映着这个地方的气质。
此外，我还收集了沿途商业设施在 Google Maps 上的顾客评论，以及地方报纸里的广告传单。这些文字和图像让我想起路上看到的风景。在 Monument Road 中，我把广告传单、地图应用里的评论和我拍摄的照片结合起来，构建出自己对于日本乡村和晚期资本主义的图像。