It seems presumptuous to assume
that the life’s work of Seiichi Furuya is largely defined by his relationship
with his wife Christine.  Indeed, he
started as a photographer in 1970 and only met her in 1978.  She suffered from severe depression and she
killed herself in 1985.  Yet the cover
picture on this retrospective of his work, "Graz, 1997," is an image
of many photographs hanging to dry in a dark room.  The photographs show Christine’s head close up, her eyes dark,
and her face grim.  The room is bathed
in red light.  It is an odd and striking
image, showing Furuya’s preoccupation with his dead wife twelve years after her
suicide.  On the other hand, the book is
titled Alive, making the obvious point that he and their son Komyo are
alive, and she is not.  So it is natural
to assume that Furuya is inviting his audience to inspect all his pictures with
Christine in mind. 

The other biographical fact about
Furaya that needs mentioning as an obvious theme in his work is that he is a
Japanese man who moved to Eastern Europe when he was about 23, in 1973.  He is working with at least two cultural
traditions and he has spent most of his adult life as a foreigner.  It is much harder to see how this factors
into Furaya’s work, but it is striking how many of his early works are in
monochrome, full of tension and unhappiness, but in 1987 many of his color
pictures start to feature bright reds, and as the years go on the feelings
become warmer, with many images from 1997 and after being downright
vibrant. 

It is almost impossible to separate
one’s reaction to Furaya’s pictures of Christine and Komyo from one’s knowledge
of her history of depression and her jumping to her death from a building in
Berlin.  The first image of her, in
color, from 1978, the year they met and married, standing in front of a calm
body of water, wearing a skirt, a camera hanging around her neck from a strap,
smiling youthfully at the photographer, is entrancing.  The one on the next page shows her in black
and white, from the same year, wearing dungarees, looking down, preoccupied,
with dark circles under her eyes.  The
tragedy and prospect of her early self-inflicted death pervades every thought
of her, and the pictures of her are filled with sadness.  One reads her hopelessness into her eyes,
knowing almost nothing else about what she was thinking or experiencing at the
time. 

The pictures subsequent to
Christine’s suicide are more difficult to read, more inscrutable even. They
take up most of the book.  Some seem to
provide social commentary on East Berlin in the late 1980s, showing a drab and
cheerless city, so it is not surprising that Furaya and his son returned to
Graz in Austria.  The pictures become
more personal again, showing a room in their residence, a washing line in a
garden with a polka dot table cloth hanging, and tables and chairs in a
garden.  These pictures are clearly
taken with a good camera that provides more detail than one would get with a
normal 35mm film, but apart from that, they are remarkably unremarkable.  They show no people, and their emotional
tone is rather neutral.  Only the
presence of red objects in some pictures suggests the thought of Christine,
especially considering her association with red in the cover photograph.  One wonders what one is meant to be looking
for, and why some of these pictures are thought worthy of publication.   We see a young man, presumably his son
Komyo, in "Graz," 2001, now aged 20, dressed in a suit and tie in the
garden, in front of a green bush, with frost still on the ground.  Komyo folds his hand in front of him, and
poses stiffly, looking a little uncomfortable, as most young men would probably
be in such a situation.  One gets the
feeling we are looking through the Furaya family photo album.  Similarly, in "Graz, 1997," an
orange and white fat cat sprawls on its back with its legs splayed, with a
piece of a plant draped over its front, and light dappling the grass.  Most cat owners have such pictures, and it
is hard to see much distinctive about this image — possibly there’s an
intimation of death in the cat’s supine figure and closed eyes, and there’s a
sense of restfulness in the domestic scene that contrasts with the earlier
images of Christine.  Nevertheless, the
main meaning of these images seems personal, and mostly closed to the
viewer. 

There are numerous photographs from
Furaya’s travels to Tokyo, Aqaba, Arles and Mostar, some showing hotel rooms or
taken from hotel rooms, some showing events on streets, and some showing scenes
of nature.  Many are dramatic or
well-constructed, with striking colors, but there’s little thematic unity.  A few are obvious references to death and decay,
but that’s not a theme that dominates. 
So one is left to conclude that what makes these pictures significant is
not so much their formal qualities or even their particular content, but just
the very personal idea for Furaya that he has survived and that life goes
on.  The last few pictures of flowers
are quite beautiful, and since the order of the images has clearly been given a
great deal of thought, this suggests that he has come to some peace of mind and
even a sense of joy.

As a collection of responses in the
decades after a suicide, these images are striking and unusual.  It is hard to think of another photographer
who has made such a document, although we need to be careful, because Furaya
himself only gives us the pictures and uninformative titles, and the rest is
our interpretation.  As self-revelation,
this is far removed from the work of Nan Goldin, for example.  Nevertheless, Alive is intriguing and
subtly moving. 

Links:

Review
of Memoires 1995

Scalo Publishers

© 2005 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved.

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is
Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island, and editor
of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: ArtAndPhotography, Grief