Shiseido Beauty Cake
“Beloved by the Sun” Poster, 1966
Photo: Noriaki Yokosuka, Model: Beverly Maeda

Temptation, challenge,a moment of discovery despite being together for many yearsTemptation, challenge,a moment of discovery despite being together for many years

A: What is this description about?
K: This is quite a mysterious description,
isn’t it. In a way, it throws you into a story.
I immediately get the idea of someone
having a secret. What comes to mind is
the image of someone burning something,
to destroy the evidence. Someone holdinga burning book or something. It’s a quiet
image, but it hints at the potential forsomething unexpected to happen.の容姿や精神を映し出すかのように醜く変貌していくって話。
A: Haha, that sounds dramatic. Like a play. We could
look for a special location. I also get the sense ofa secret being revealed. Like an affair, or maybe a dark family-secret. I thought of the Oscar
Wilde story, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dorianis a handsome young man whose beauty andyouth remain the same on the surface, but hispainted portrait transforms into an ugly reflection
because it reveals his real being and spirit.
K: Yes, ‘the secret’ is key here. We canthink about taking a slightly theatricalapproach. it could connect well to temptation. We could use a historical setting.
A: What sort of location would be good?
K: Maybe the Rijksmuseum library, or somewhere that symbolizes traditional authority?
A: Hm. Maybe we don’t need to make it so easy tounderstand. Considering this Shiseido’s ‘Remodeling’ series of photos as a whole, it might be agood idea to take a close-up portrait.
K: Yes, true. That would work better forthis series. The artists participating inthis exhibition are all female, so maybe
we should use all female models for thisseries?
A: Yes, good idea. We can focus on the personality,facial expressions and gestures of the model
rather than grand settings with lots of effects.
But we can also prepare a smoke spray for thephotoshoot.
K: I agree. Smoke spray in combination with asense of temptation is often used to createa mysterious image, right? I think we aregood at mixing pre-prepared elementswith more intuitive impulses on location.
A: I like photos to have a natural, authentic feeling.
Although it’s never authentic in literal sense, because we prepare in advance like this.
K: For the model, we need to choose someone
with the right kind of expression. Someone
who can act. What kind of image do you
see it as?
A: The model is caught in the act doing somethingthat is not allowed in some way?
K: Good idea.
A: There could be a contrast between the clothing
and the location. Like, maybe she’s in the forest
but overdressed? Or someone gambling in a
shabby bar, with a glitzy dress? I like the ideaof a disconnect between the model and hersurroundings.
K: By showing a disconnect, it also connects up with challenge. Someone hiding
something in the forest maybe? The photo
should also capture ‘the moment’. It needs
to have a certain movement too.
A: We capture the moment - someone beautiful
who you wouldn’t expect to have a dark secret.
K: Why does it need to be someone beautiful?
A: It won’t be Dorian Gray if not.

Shiseido Beauty Cake
“Beloved by the Sun” Poster, 1966
Photo: Noriaki Yokosuka, Model: Beverly Maeda

Summer, heat, light, dazzling sunlight, the sound of the waves,a transparent blue sky, white clouds, grains of sand, white swimsuit, burnt skin.

Summer, heat, light, dazzling sunlight, the sound of the waves,a transparent blue sky, white clouds, grains of sand, white swimsuit, burnt skin.

K: These words transport me to a beach. This isquite a classic scene, no?

K: I guess whatever you’re used to seeing becomesreality in your mind. Even if that’s not the reality.

A: In the Netherlands, there’s only a limited
number of days where we could shoot thison location, though. We’re not famous forour sunny weather... What do you mean
by a classic scene?

A: Returning to the Summer, heat, light, dazzling sunlight...’, what shall we do aboutwhite clouds? If there aren’t any whiteclouds that day, should we Photoshop
them in later?

K: With words like blue sky, dazzling sunlight, andwhite swimsuit, the first thing that comes to mymind is a Mediterranean summer scene. Although
I’m not a beach person really. I’ve never lived nearto the sea, and I don’t have a strong connection
to it. So I guess the first image I imagine is thegeneric Mediterranean beach,,rather than something from my personal experience.

K: I don’t know…(thinking) I have a feeling thatit’s not a good idea to Photoshop them in. But
if there are no white clouds on the date of theshoot, I guess we have to consider it.

A: You mean those images that you see a lot
in travel advertisements or TV commercials? Models jumping on a white sandbeach or people drinking cocktails andso on?
K: Yes. Sometimes, although I don’t look at Instagram and other social media that often, I can lookat a professionally taken image there and perceiveit, unconsciously, as just a regular photo. And
then I process that image as a standard image.
In the way that I had the Mediterranean Sea in
my head, even though I wasn’t familiar with it.
A: Yes. I think the same when I show myclients sample photos to represent ideas
for future jobs. You know when you havemeetings with them, right? I make several
versions because I want to show a variety
of different directions we could go in, andI notice that stock photos go down wellwith clients. Even though it’s clear thatwhen you actually shoot a scene like thatin real life, it will look different, right? Themodels are heavily photoshopped as well,in those sorts of images.
The photos that are eventually delivered
have a strong documentary element, andthe clients seem to be happy with that. So
why do you think people think that stock
photos are realistic?

A: Yes.
K: The image composition that came to my mind
first was like the photo of Niels that we took for
Ping Pong (another Hymmen and Hiroi project).
The face and torso are in focus and the background is blurred. But instead of the pink/light
blue gradated background of the sea, we’d havethe blue sky and sun.
A: Yes. The sun is strong and there’s sandy
sweat on the model’s skin.
K: Who could be the model?
A: The description doesn’t mention anything
about the model. It could be anyone. I’dprefer not to use a typical female model. A typical model in combination withsummer, blue sky, and a white swimsuit
could look clichéd.
K: What do you mean by a typical model?
A: You know what I mean. Someone withvery long thin legs and arms and a symmetrical face. Isn’t it strange that there isno description of the model? There must
be one in this advert.
K: That’s true, there are no words written about themodel. It’s a Shiseido summer advertisement, soit might be a sunscreen advertisement.

Behind the Eyelids　　　　　　　　　That day, after returning from the beach, I ate a quick
breakfast and then entered my studio right away. I set theprimed canvas onto the easel, and dipped a fine brush intobrown paint that I’d thinned down considerably. Beginningwith the forehead, I moved the brush in one fluid line, tracing
the hollow of the eye socket, the pointed tip of the nose, themouth, then lifting from the chin up to the ear before drawing
in the curve of the neck. With the addition of one more line running in parallel, the outline of the head was established.
Almost immediately after getting up that morning I’d setout for the beach, which lay about twenty minutes’ walk awayfrom my house. As always, my camera hung from my neck.
Standing on the strip of sand from which the morning tide
had began to recede, I raised the finder to my eye and began
moving the camera back and forth, side to side, in search ofsomething that piqued my interest. The task I set myself is
to look carefully, to remember, and then to paint what I see.
I use a telephoto lens in order to better remember whatever I
look at. I find it hard to get my imagination working by takingthings in hand, or moving close enough towards them that I
can physically sense their distance. Rather, I like to quash theusual sense of distance, the standard relationship we havewith objects when looking at them, and to generate instead
an image that appears somewhere severed from an everyday
context. For that purpose, I find a 100mm telephoto lens works
well. As soon as my eye meets the finder, the distance vanishes, and I’m drawn inside a different way of seeing. Do you actually press the shutter? I’m often asked, and my answer is no.
Commit the scene to a photograph and it becomes a memoryof the eyes, filtered through the camera. What I want to paintis rather the world that materializes on the other side of thelens, set apart from my physical being.
In the frame that morning was a woman facing out to sea,
shown from the chest up. Her long hair, pushed up from her
forehead. hung down her back; her chin was slightly raised,and her eyes were closed. Keeping the lens trained on her
face, I used my eyes to trace the contours of her forehead, hernose, her mouth, her chin. Her neck was impressively long, andseemed to burst forward diagonally from her shoulders. Therewas something about her sculptural form, its proportions
slightly exaggerated, which I found myself drawn to.
In the studio, I worked for five hours in a state of absorption,
breaking only for lunch, and then my hand came suddenly to ahalt, as if I’d run out of gas. The canvas before me was layered
with light browns, ochres, and beiges. As I’d repeatedly goneover the outlines, the figure I was depicting had blended withits background—to such an extent, in fact, that one couldn’ttell any more that the canvas depicted a person. I didn’t want
to explain the woman, but rather to bring into focus her trueessence. So what was that true essence, then? The only reply
I could have given to such a question would was that it was
something that transcended form. ‘Trying to capture a per-son’s true way of being which transcended form’—putting it
into those words, it made little sense, but it was exactly thatparadox that I wanted to enact in my artwork.
I’d been invited for dinner that evening at the house of afriend who lived in the next town along. An acquaintance of
theirs from Japan was coming to stay, and the friend hadannounced the intention to make sushi. The idea of sushi appealed, but part of me was resistant. I wanted to remain immersed in the woman’s image for longer. It seemed that if I
pulled myself away, then what I had achieved today would slip
away from my eyes. Yet I decided to go to my friend’s regardless. I’d cancelled our last meeting after something sudden
had come up, and I felt reluctant to do so again.
As it turned out, I may as well have cancelled. On the drive
to my friend’s house I had a car accident, and never made it
there. According to the police’s explanation afterwards, I’dturned too soon coming right off the bridge, and smashed intothe railing. When I regained consciousness, I had no memoryof the incident at all. Staring up at the unfamiliar ceiling floating above me, I wondered where on earth I was.
My body was exhaustively examined using all kinds of devices, from the top of my head down to my toes, but the doctors
could find nothing out of the ordinary. They had no explanationof why I might have caused an accident of that kind. The partsof myself I’d hit upon collision were a little sore, but that was
the extent of my injuries, and I was amazed to discover that I
had no visible wounds. On the fourth day I was told there wasno need for me to stay any longer, and discharged.
Reaching home, I headed straight into my studio, and cameto a stop in front of my easel. The sight of the painting I’d begun that day leapt out at me. There was no doubting it. It was
the same person—the first nurse who’d come to see me afterI’d regained consciousness. As my eyes had fallen on the longneck protruding from the triangular collar of her uniform, I’dbeen taken by the feeling that I’d met her somewhere before.
The second time she came to my bedside, that sense became
a conviction, and so I asked her. “Were you on ------ beach early
Friday morning?” She cocked that long neck of hers, and thenanswered, ‘No, that couldn’t have been me. I was on the nightshift, and fell asleep immediately after. I woke up after 2pm.’
Maybe her memory was mistaken, I thought. But no, thatwasn’t it. Recalling the way her closed eyes looked that morning on the beach, I suddenly understood. They were the eyes ofa person who had climbed out of bed in the middle of sleep—a person watching whatever images flicked across the underside of her eyelids. I had been taken along on those eyes’ voyage, and finally, now, I had returned. As this idea moved into
the realm of certainty, I felt the strength brimming up in me. I
threw off my coat, picked up my brush, and carefully lowered
it onto the canvas.

Written by Akiko Otake.
Translated by Polly Barton.