The Benefits of Selfies

This month, while passing by Tokyo Station, I happened upon the T3 PHOTO FESTIVAL 2025. That reminded me that, due to a work I saw at last year's T3 PHOTO FESTIVAL 2024, I have recently come to realize the benefits of taking selfies.

T3 PHOTO FESTIVAL 2024

One day last October, while passing by a building near Tokyo Station, I came across a photography event called T3 PHOTO FESTIVAL 2024. I learned that during the event, many photographs were being exhibited in and around various buildings, centered around Tokyo Station. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to see many wonderful works in the spaces between urban buildings, using interesting display methods, and all for free.

Hiromi Tsuchida, 'Aichi, Isshiki Kurosawa'

Now, at that time, the work titled 'Aichi, Isshiki Kurosawa' (1969) by photographer Hiromi Tsuchida, which I saw for the first time outdoors at Midtown Yaesu, left a deep impression on me. It was a single photograph showing four men and women in work clothes, lying down and relaxing while drinking under the shade of a tree. I thought the relaxed, natural expressions of the four of them were just wonderful. As an amateur, I don't have any sophisticated critique. I just honestly thought it was very good. A photograph is a flat surface. Moreover, the work is in black and white and was taken over 50 years ago in 1969, but as I looked at that large photograph, I felt as if I were there by the tree, enjoying a gathering with the four of them. Tsuchida is recording through a camera, but I felt a sense that there was no barrier of a camera. I often see the phrases 'through the camera' or 'through the viewfinder' written in a cool way in magazines and books, but it was a feeling as if neither a camera nor a viewfinder existed.

After seeing 'Aichi, Isshiki Kurosawa,' I wanted to see the photo book in which that photograph was published, so I first looked for it at my local library. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it. Later, I heard the good news that it would likely be at the library of the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in Ebisu, and that the general public could also use that library. I immediately went to the museum's library and was able to view Hiromi Tsuchida's photo book 'Zokushin' (Vulgar Gods), which contains 'Aichi, Isshiki Kurosawa.' From the photo book, I learned of Tsuchida's desire to record how Japan's rapid economic growth was eroding the indigenous aspects of the country. Since then, I have become interested in Tsuchida and have started to pay attention to his works and information little by little.

Now, I had been troubled for several years by cyber issues such as internet stalking and impersonation. From around February 2025, to reset, I stopped using almost all social media, including LINE, and tried to live quietly, using my smartphone as little as possible. I gathered information within limited means, such as independent internet searches, town bulletin boards, bookstores, libraries, and flyers. I was living a life close to analog, but when the Oedo Line train I happened to be on stopped at Roppongi Station, or perhaps when I visited Roppongi for a rare occasion, I encountered a large poster for Hiromi Tsuchida's photo exhibition 'Zokushin' to be held at the Fujifilm Gallery, and I made a mental note that I had to go.

At the end of March, on the first day of the 'Zokushin' photo exhibition, I visited the Fujifilm Gallery and was fortunate enough to witness Tsuchida himself being interviewed by foreign television. Tsuchida was talking very happily in front of the foreign reporters. He was in his 80s, but I got the impression that he was full of energy, friendly, and cheerful. I also managed to take a commemorative photo with him in the commotion, which gave me a boost.

Furthermore, in May, I attended the open 'Zokushin' gallery talk, where I was given the opportunity to ask him directly about his thoughts on the works and what he considers to be 'Japanese-ness.' Tsuchida was, once again, a cheerful photographer full of energy who instantly drew many visitors into a harmonious mood.

A photographer is someone who takes pictures with a camera, but Tsuchida himself is full of energy that puts people around him at ease and harmonizes with his subjects. I began to think that perhaps that is why he can take photos that make me, the viewer, feel as if I am in the world of the work, just as I felt with 'Aichi, Isshiki Kurosawa'.

Tsuchida is like the zoologist Mutsu-goro whom I saw on TV when I was a child. It's that thing where Mutsu-goro would approach an animal he was meeting for the first time, and even if he was licked all over or faced the fine line between a playful nip and a real bite, he wouldn't flinch, and by smiling and getting into their space, he would become friends with any animal. I feel that Tsuchida takes those kinds of photos—not through a camera, not through a viewfinder—because he has a personality that allows him to harmonize well with the people who are there.

From self-portraits to smartphone selfies

At the gallery talk, I heard about the works Tsuchida has been working on, such as photographing the belongings left behind in Hiroshima, and about the self-portraits he has been taking every day (?) for a long time. Tsuchida has a twin brother, and the story about the relative strangeness of twins that he noticed through his portraits was also interesting.

From Tsuchida's talk about self-portraits, I thought of the foreign and Japanese girls who enthusiastically take selfies in the city. Experts might get angry at me and say that the self-portraits taken by a photographer like Tsuchida and the smartphone selfies seen everywhere are on different dimensions, but that is what I associated them with. Until then, for me, selfies were a world I couldn't understand.

(Why do you want to take pictures of yourself so much?)

I had a slightly mocking feeling. But now that I think about it, it seems that it came from a feeling of envying people who have confidence, which was lurking deep inside me, where I lacked confidence.

For a while now, I have started living a life where I dare to do things I have never done before and go to places I have never been, and I have been able to gain many discoveries and realizations that I had never had before.

In the midst of all this, I had been recording my meals on my smartphone as a remnant of a diet I tried while focusing on my body more than ever before in my life. Inspired by Mr. Tsuchida's self-portraits and the young women in the city taking selfies that those portraits reminded me of, I decided to start taking selfies along with my meals around June of this year. Of course, since I'm already at a certain age, I only do this when I'm eating at home.

For someone like me who has spent a long time feeling insecure about my appearance and preferring not to be in photos if possible, the hurdle for taking selfies at home, even with no one watching, was very high. I had to start by thinking about how to extend my arm and which finger to use to press the shutter button. Looking back at the photos from when I first started taking selfies with my meals, my face looks just like a stone. I'm sure it's the same for everyone, but when you take a selfie with your smartphone, you naturally look back at the photo yourself. And then,

(Whoa! Is my expression really that stiff? Is it okay that my hair is messy? Is it okay that my eyebrows are still missing parts?)

Thoughts about myself like that would arise, and those thoughts would start to change into advice to myself, such as,

(Why not give a big smile while you're at it? Wouldn't it be better to fix your hair? Why not try filling in your eyebrows properly?)

that began to change into advice for myself.

Before long, I started playing around in secret before my meals at home, like taking a selfie that looked like an advertisement for a jar of seaweed paste when I opened a delicious one. (Now that I've written it here, it's no longer a secret.) Recently, I've even started making funny faces on purpose, and even when I see the wrinkles on my forehead that have started to appear, although there is a little sadness, I can turn that into laughter. It may be that I've become more thick-skinned with age, but having incorporated this game into my life for about four months, I feel that the benefits of selfies are significant. I feel like I've gained a sense of vitality that kicks away the age and physical complexes I tend to feel self-conscious about.

Even I find the change in just four months to be very interesting. At first, the photos had a stiff expression like a stone, but looking at recent photos, I often find myself laughing, even though it's a photo of me. Perhaps, with each selfie I take, that thing often heard about these days, "self-affirmation," is skyrocketing within me.

Now, coming to this point, when I think again about the photographer Hiromi Tsuchida, who has been taking self-portraits for a long time, I think that the self-portraits he has been taking for so long might play a role in the source of his energy. I might be wrong, but I like to think so. By taking photos of himself every single day and looking at them, he naturally faces himself every day, and I can't help but feel that his "self-affirmation" is maintained at an incredible height.

It is very interesting and a happy thing for me to have lived in the same era as the photographer Hiromi Tsuchida, to have met him in person, and to have been able to hear about his work. If the chance to meet Mr. Tsuchida comes again, I would like to ask him directly: what kind of changes occurred in you by taking self-portraits? I would like to ask him, "Could it be that self-portraits are also a source of your energy?"