Yasushi Mori – Hey! Hattori!
Yasushi Mori is part of the jury’s top ten choice. He is one of the participants who published a book from his project proposed for Neko project, please check: http://www.libroarte.jp/hattori.html
Yasushi Mori has never been really interested in photographing cats. At his house those last years he got a cat named Hattori-kun, fled from Futaba, a town in Fukushima, when the Great East Japan Earthquake devastated the area in 2011.
Yasushi Mori gradually starts to pay attention to Hattori-kun, overwhelmed both by his solitariness and his loveliness. Let’s listen to the unexpected experience that Yasushi Mori had:
“One day, when I was looking at the photographs in the last few frames of the roll of film I had taken, there was Hattori-kun with an expression on his face that was just like mine.
From beyond the coarse granularity of the photographic film, those eyes gazed steadily back at me as if clinging desperately to life. Far from home, completely domesticated, here was his true nature, the expression of a wild animal he showed for a brief moment only to me.
We go with the flow of the scenery outside the small window, and I want to be engrossed forever in taking pictures.
But a cat’s clock advances at a very fast speed, so I know that Hattori-kun’s clock will get ahead of mine and stop before mine does.
Until then, I will love this mysterious, elusive creature and capture in photographs the Hattori-kun only I can see.”
Yasushi Mori’s photography is intimate and delicate. I am overwhlemed by emotion and love while reading the book and seeing the picture.
http://www.yasushimori.com
© Yasushi Mori