Ten Words Resounding in the First World War

The project began with a proposal from gallerist Eiko Kamiyama: ten words that would open a dialogue between calligraphy and image, bringing together Kasui’s writing and my own artistic vision. To give them form, I turned to stereoscopic glass plates from the First World War, taken by a French soldier in the trenches and capturing fragments of his everyday life.

Beyond their condition as war documents, these images become spaces of resonance. What they capture —waiting in the mud, brief pauses of rest, the trace of destruction— opens itself here to another reading, as if the present could still listen within them to something deeper than the testimony of a pivotal moment in history. The artistic intervention does not seek to return them to their original meaning, but to situate them in another threshold, unfolding new significances tied to the intimacy of those instants where war was only the backdrop of their lives.

The outcome of this project has taken the form of an artist’s book, in which word and image are bound together in accordance with Japanese tradition. With covers of silk from antique kimonos, the work becomes a symbol of how delicate materiality can sustain the vibration of the human in the midst of devastation.

_{* The ten words proposed by Eiko Kamiyama are: Boundary, Dream, Fly, Forgetfulness, Hidden, Life, Memory, Miracle, Scar, and Space/Sky.*}

- Liquid photographic emulsion, painting and collage on Fabriano paper. 13 × 26 cm. -