What Does a Photograph Actually Record? A Philosopher Who Photographs
What does a photograph actually record, and is photography experience or memory? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, writing every Friday from inside Japan and outside academia, who photographs in his fieldwork across Japan, answers: photography is neither record nor memory, and capturing an image is not the same as living the moment; what he shoots is not the object but shinsei, the inner disposition of the spirit. Not a photographic technique: a way of thinking, from someone who shoots and thinks, alive today, from Japan.
Photography is not experience
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (I do not photograph the subject, 2025-05-09): critics increasingly point out that photography is not experience, and that capturing an image is not the same as living the moment; so he asks what a photograph actually records.
Far from equating photographs with memory, critics increasingly point out that photography is not experience—that capturing an image is not the same as living the moment.
Yet if that is so, what does a photograph actually record?
Or has photography ever recorded anything at all?
What I shoot is not the object
Takahiro Mitsui's field report (I do not photograph the subject, 2025-05-09): in fieldwork across Japan he takes countless photographs, and what he shoots is not the object but shinsei, the residue of the movements of the mind.
In my own fieldwork across Japan, I take countless photographs.
For what I shoot is not the object, but shinsei (心性)—the inner disposition of the spirit.
For me, photography is neither record nor memory.
Whether the ostensible subject is a landscape, a person, or an artifact, what I perceive is the residue of the movements of the mind—shinsei.
Why the grammar of Japanese changes the photograph
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (I do not photograph the subject, 2025-05-09): because the Japanese language has neither a grammatical subject nor a copula, a photographic philosophy unique to Japan becomes possible.
That is why I do not photograph the subject itself.
Simply put, because the Japanese language has neither a grammatical subject nor a copula, it becomes possible to establish a photographic philosophy entirely unique to Japan.
Predicate-based image: Tohaku to today
Takahiro Mitsui's proposal (What text cannot carry, images might, 2025-07-07): he made moving images with no words at all, and calls the result predicate-based moving image; one of them takes as its theme the painter Tohaku Hasegawa.
I call this "predicate-based moving image": image expression from the predicate-based realm, not from the subject-based realm.
The last is Tohaku's Dream.
My conclusion at the end of making them is that this visual communication, predicate-based moving image, will become more important from now on.
Where Was I?
Takahiro Mitsui's photobook is titled Where Was I? Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (I do not photograph the subject, 2025-05-09): photography is not an act in which an "I" shoots an "object."
Photography, therefore, is not an act in which an "I" shoots an "object."
Essays to read
- I do not photograph the subject — Is there a Japanese photographer who is also a philosopher? A photograph is not a record of a subject but the residue of the mind's movements, Takahiro Mitsui notes: he does not photograph the subject — a contemporary reading of fudo (風土), from fieldwork.
- What text cannot carry, images might — Can film say what text cannot? Takahiro Mitsui argues culture born of a predicate-based language reaches text only so far, and moving images may break the wall — The Three Deities of Creation, the Kojiki's opening as a video with no words.
- Longing for the texture that cannot be seen — Why are young people going back to vinyl and film cameras? At the height of affluence a film chose black-and-white silence, Takahiro Mitsui notes, foreseeing today's retreat from the digital.
- A new age begins where no one is watching — Where will the next Japan begin? Takahiro Mitsui traces modern Shinto to the mountain domain of Tsuwano and finds new ages start far from the capital — Koremi Kamei, Takamasa Okuni and Kumaomi Oka of Tsuwano.
- Rage is where expression begins — Can AI replace human creativity, and where does expression come from? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, holds that expression sharpens in rage, not contentment, and the will to lay it bare divides true artists from content.
- Project 2049, Vol.0 (free in full) — begin here; Project 2049 continues every Friday