`​When I was a young child, I heard on the news that there had been a serial road crash involving five vehicles. I wanted to know what had happened to the sixth car that would have been following immediately behind the others. I still vividly remember that the adults around me thought I was funny, and that the only thing they said to me was “Nothing happened to the sixth car!”

The news stated the cause of the accident and that it involved five cars. I knew nothing about the vehicle that was not involved in the crash. Perhaps the car itself was undamaged, but the people inside had been injured when the brakes were applied. It was a mystery to me back then that people would assume that the fact that we were told nothing meant that nothing had happened.

Is there no need to find out whether nothing happened or is happening? When I examined my reasons for continuing to take photographs, I noticed that I had been pondering this question. The story of an event is like a tree: it has a thick trunk and thin branches. Having grown up, I understood for myself how difficult it is to resist the power of the thick “trunk” of the story. And sometimes, to avoid getting bogged down in details, we have to ignore those thin “branches”.
　
The camera has the power to draw the photographer to places where there seems to be nothing, and there certainly are places that one finds through having a camera. There is a connection between this and my childhood curiosity about the sixth car – the thin branch of that story.

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　５台の玉突き事故が発生したことを知らせるニュースが流れると、そのすぐ後ろを走っていたはずの６台目の車がどうなったのか幼少の私は知りたがった。周りの大人はそんな私を面白がり、「6台目の車には何も起きなかったのよ」とだけ私に言ったことを鮮明に覚えている。

　ニュースでは事故の原因や５台の車の状況が伝えられ、事故に巻き込まれなかった車両のことは分からなかった。車は無事だけれども乗っていた人はブレーキをかけて怪我をしてしまったかもしれない。伝えられていないことがなぜ何も起きなかったことを意味するのか、当時の私には不思議だった。

　何も起きなかったこと、何も起きていないことには触れなくて良いのだろうか。私が写真を続けている理由を突き詰めると、この問いを反芻してきた自分に気づく。ある出来事からは太い幹と細い枝を流れる物語が生まれ、太い幹の物語が持つ引力から逃れることの難しさをこの身を持って理解したのは大人になってからだ。我々は物事を前に進めるために、細い枝の物語には眼をつぶってしまう時がある。
　
　カメラには、何もなさそうなところに自分の身体を向かわせる力がある。カメラを持つことで到達できる場所が確かにある。それは、幼少の頃に知りたかった６台目の車のこと、細い枝の物語のとっかかりを探すことに繋がっている。

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