The first time I saw Nozomi Iijima’s photographs, tears came to my eyes. It was Mister Hasegawa’s birthday. Around the generous table, young photographers he had published in ASPHALT° were reunited. Nozomi was the guest of issue VI. A short text printed in japanese and english « Growing up in a farm complex » and, on a full page watching you with relentless eyes, the egyptian profile of a jailed pig caught in coal’s darkness and silvered flow. She sat in front of me, opened a large box and in little folds, the betrayal graped me.
« Pigs know that they will be shipped » a farmer once said to me. Once the pigs become large enough and are ready to be shipped, they are marked with spray and they will be loaded on a truck soon enough. »
Here are pigs, big portraits anxious and sads, flashed for greater good in their dark hell, each so unique while alone at the most bitter time. A full innocent life had happened and was now ending by men’s will… I found feminity in voyeurisme, so close then to Merry Alpern’s great « Windows on Wall street » while documenting the laborious cruaulty exhuding from society. It was « Pigs put in the cage according to size »
« … Easy to forget that up until just a few days ago, those pigs were eating food, fighting with each others in the same pen, taking a nap , mingling with the others, trying to suck on other pig’s nipples in search of mother’s warmth, feeling the summer heat of just the other day… » « I also feel sad that they died without becoming meat product »
Young Nozomi Iijima started photography even before learning, then at PLACE M, she studied at Mister Hiroyasu’s quite and lucid pace, the distance linking the Society to a dark room. Later on joining Takehiko Nakafuji‘s burning passion she tooked part in an intense workshop followed by a noticed first exhibition. In 2011, her impressive installation at Nikon salon won her an award. A 5 meters long, 3,5 high, a pannel of argentic prints shaped with tense rythmes the series of pigs’s portraits . The presence of the huge rectangle shows her powerfull sense of space, the act of her photographic radicality. This talent she used now in « Scoffing pigs » the hand-made scarlet edition that I first introduced On Format festival bookmarket (Derby, England) and exhibited and ordered now for her soloshow at Photography Strongholds curated by Yumi Goto. A small tresor which deploys itself with great ability. She would like also to travel, to explore abroad other farm’s lifes, different animal conditions and photographs them with her expert look. Because Nozomi Iijima photographs where she belongs. For ever, she has documented her father’s farm. A life she proudly walked through. A life where men, horses , cows, pigs and chickens age all together in the cycle of seasons. All belonging to each others. covered with mud while watched by the mighty Gods in windy embraces and petting sunshines. In cold and warmth, Nozomi searches and stands at a pig’s point of view. Which memories build a pig’s world ? What identities in flesh, honors in fate ? In acceptance and gracefullness, in endless empathy, she envisions the tragedy’s deepness and documents the somber gift to produce a body of works that truly enlarges our perceptions about what really stands in that piggery. And back to us while facing our pleasures and guilts, this work takes the power to change us.
Sophie Boursat, (Photographic builder, artist and writer).
published « L’eau et l’huile » éditions Sabine Weispieser, 2003
ISBN : 978-2-84805-013-3
Nozomi Iijima
Birth day : 1979 October 6th in SAITAMA préfecture (Japan)
She studied photography under Mr.Hiroyasu Nakai at [Place M] in 2004
Nozomi IIjima: Scoffing Pig
May 11, 2013 to June 16, 2013
Reminders Photography Stronghold Gallery
Higashi-Mukojima
2-38-5 Sumida-ku
Tokyo, Japan
