YOKO AND FUKASE

Yoko Wanibe, the second wife of Fukase, easily became his only muse. Photographing Yoko continuously as she left and returned to their apartment, he created a series titled ‘From Window’ (1973), featuring her either making funny faces or posing in playful ways. She seemed to enjoy being a piece of art, or maybe she knew she was merely just a display of art and wanted to show the photographer she wasn't only his muse. 

After 13 years of Fukase looking at his wife through the viewfinder of a film camera, they separated in 1976. Full of grief and love that has not been seen enough, he returns to his home town where the raven became his replacement muse. ‘The Solitude of Ravens’ (1986), was voted best photobook of the last 25 years in 2010. The series follows Fukases grief as he obsesses over a different aspect of love, the detrimental aspect. Fukase photographs ravens all up till 1982, where states that he became one himself. 

In 1992, Fukase took a fall down the stairs of his favorite bar, leading him into a coma of 20 years where he would pass away in 2012. Yoko had visited him twice a month, she says; ‘He remains part of my identity… With a camera in front of his eye, he could see; not without’.

There are many different appreciations for Fukases work as well as a concern of obsession. Where is the line for obsessive love? While looking at the photographs taken of Yoko, you see this beautiful light of life beaming with her own sense of the world, you only wonder how she'd feel anytime she saw a camera come out, if she knew his face or just the way his hands positioned the frame, If he knew that she was real and not just a made up image in his head. From reading the lines she had said while beside him in the  hospital bed, I think maybe she knew that he did love her, in his own way, in his artist way. To him, she was art in a way no one could make, so instead of replicating it he followed her finding grace in her every move, Though maybe Yoko was not made for this type of love. She was convinced that she was just a portrait to him, nothing more, while he had thought he'd shown her that his eyes were made only for her, nothing more.