Gips

A leg fixed in plaster (“gips” in Japanese) means a limitation to everyday life that will last for several weeks. Japanese photographer Asako Narahashi had an exhibition planned for the following month when she broke her left pinky toe and had her leg covered in a cast in April of 1991. Not yet having taken enough photographs to cover the walls of the gallery, she decided to document her life with her leg in plaster. “[T]he reason I didn’t want to look back on these photos until now was also because I didn’t want to be reunited with myself as I appear in them. Memory is a vague thing, recalling only the good things or forgetting and rearranging things as is convenient. Reunions with one’s younger self are bitter-sweet and sour. […]Though I had reviewed the contact prints carefully at the time, when I’ve looked back over them in the intervening twenty-five-plus years, I’ve seen things I didn’t think of before, and things that I hadn’t noticed back then look newly striking or charming now. On the other hand, some shots that I selected before are embarrassing, and I probably wouldn’t choose them now. ”— from Asako Narahashi’s afterword