Playing the piano upstairs - Sayuri Ichida

This series was born out of my relationship with my sister and the childhood memories we share of growing up in Niigata, one of the snowiest regions in Japan. As children, our personalities were very different, and our relationship was distant.

After losing our mother to cancer towards the end of our adolescence, we went through the grieving process together. Over time, a deeper understanding of one another slowly took root. Photographing my sister became a way of acknowledging the transformation of our bond.

All the photographs were taken in our hometown, a small coastal town where our father worked at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant. As children, we would play on the beach in summer and watch the towers glitter at night, a sight that seemed strangely magical to us. Since the Fukushima disaster, this same coastline has come to embody both nostalgia and anxiety: its beauty is now inseparable from a certain sense of unease.

In this work, I have combined portraits of my sister with images of the surrounding landscape: fields, snow and sea. The snowy scenes hold a particular resonance. The long winters and heavy snowfall in Niigata have shaped our relationship with time. These snow-covered landscapes are metaphors for memory itself: ever-changing, veiled, and yet softly glowing just beneath the surface.

We both took piano lessons while growing up. My sister was completely devoted to it: she would come home from school and play for hours. It is this memory that inspired the title.

We have 5 of the 10 special collector's copies accompanied by two photogravure prints available. There is the option of having the two photogravures framed in a double frame with a handmade wooden stand. 

stock number: NB865