Fin D’Automne by Olivier Kervern

"Three journeys have given birth to “Fin D'Automne”; the first being a solitary one, in stages from Tokyo to Kagoshima, southernmost city in Japan. A voyage criss-crossing throughout the country, abandoned to fate and misfortunes, intuitions and stereotypes, seeking to comfort or distort the influence of books, tales, novels and films about the Japanese culture which made me yearn to travel here. I took me time to come to terms and embrace the photographs produced during this first trip.

I returned to Japan in 2018 to reunite with Nanako whom I met in Paris and who would become my wife: This second journey was dedicated to her. Instead of wandering around we stayed in Tokyo, wilful castaways, living one day at a time. I followed her around, indifferent to Japan’s singularity, penetrating the heart of her familiar spaces which kept eluding me. I found myself strolling in Naborito, which is either the name of a metro station, a borough or the river that runs through it…I never found out which is true, despite the importance of that specific place in that very moment.

The third time around, a year later in 2019, we met again in Tokyo, in a rented flat. Nanako felt like a stranger in her own city, in a neighbourhood she was discovering alongside me. I loved Sakurajosui, resembling a village, a railway running through it, with level crossings for the passing train: no sidewalks, just a thin white line separating pedestrians from traffic.

All these images were taken during these three periods, blending the intimacy and diverse distances, scales or degrees in successive layers. Photographs taken during three consecutive journeys to Japan, between 2015 and 2019. They are a testament of my elusive encounter with this singular territory ." – Olivier Kervern