FORGET-ME-NOT
Forget-me-not explores the personal story of artist Keiji Fujimoto’s experience finding his place as a gay man in Japan. Through the use of archival images, drawings, paintings, and photographs made in Japan, Kenya and Uganda, Fujimoto finds commonalities between his experience in his home country and those of gay men in Kenya and Uganda—experiences marked by social isolation and solitude.
When I was younger, drawings and paintings were ways for me to reflect my own hidden feelings to men. Because I could not share my feelings toward men with anyone, I was always turning to my sketch book or canvas, spending my time reflecting on my worries and other dark feelings. In that way, drawings and paintings probably show more traces of myself in their ambiguity.
Through putting myself into several different cultural views of homosexuality, I could notice that being gay is not only about having sex or loving someone who is the same sex as I am. The solitude and the struggle, the years without sharing honest feelings with family and friends seemed to be essential in developing my sense of myself as a gay man. That is why I spent more energy on inclusion of this sense of separation, rather than inclusion of lots of images fulfilled with love.
Although the places where we grew up are different, what young gay guys are worried about is quite similar.
I learned that we are more connected by sharing its solitude and struggle, rather than the sense of love.
The book itself is the other self of myself. The book has its own way of thinking. It sometimes pushes the viewer to share its feeling, especially if the viewer is experiencing his own personal struggle.
Through completing the photo project in a book form, I’m hoping to leave my vestige in this world. I want my trace to get older with those book holders, even after my death.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in 1983. Keiji Fujimoto is a photographer originally from Hiroshima, Japan. He had been walking around several parts of the world in his young age. After he graduated from university, he started documenting third worlds, with a particular focus on those people who live under the physical and psychological shadows. Keiji is currently based in Tokyo, Japan.