This body of work stems from my interest in self-representation in front of the camera, and how gravity and physical stress has an effect on how we are seen. For this project I stipulated that the sitter must lie with one leg raised and arms placed under and on the body, on either side head raised in line with the body. I chose this pose to mimic the standard posture which everyone conforms to in Japan when standing – legs apart in line with body, hands by side. This is seen as quite restricted to a western eye, but is quite normal in Japan.

Standing in front of a camera full figure is awkward. As Rineke Dijkstra states: ‘you start to think about where to put your hands, and things like which side of leg to stand on etc.’ If you think like that, because of all the restrictions and rules I am giving to the sitter, it may be difficult for the sitter to be in control of the image of the self. Just like it is difficult sometimes to be in total control of the self in certain environments which you are not used to, or which have heavy restrictions.

Some of the sitters look more in agony from the physical stress of keeping the head and leg up, and some look more effortless. I cannot see this so well while I am taking the photograph but the camera manages to record it better than my eyes and this makes it possible for us to see afterwards how it has an affect on the physical nature. For example, one of the ears turning red from the blood floating towards the ground, muscles around the mouth and hair being pulled down, and the upper body and the lower body are being twisted from trying to keep one leg up.

Ordinary people are the main characters in this work. They struggle in everyday life and cannot necessarily achieve things which they are expected to do. To keep the tension between the photographer and the photographed, I chose people whom I have never met before. The clothes that they wear do not necessarily suit them, and I put a light on them in order to reveal the struggle that people experience in adapting to new situations, their environment, and new stages in life. I did not choose people who were in any way physically similar to each other – only the pose and studio setting link them. I chose people from different backgrounds, with different body shapes, and ages.

In the process of creating this body of work I found that turning the final pictures to a portrait position reinforced the alienation between the subject, and the background/pose. The subjects are now neither standing nor quite lying down and the movement of gravity on their body feels like a physical act in a far more violent way than is usually experienced.

The white background makes it possible for the viewer to concentrate more on the sitter in the photograph. The balance between the background and the sitter is very important to me because I want to emphasize that the environment has a big impact on people. Fluorescent lighting reveals the paleness of skin and all the traits on the surface of human body. The intention is for the sitters to be more exposed than if they were stripped naked. The shutter speed is very slow, sometimes one of the legs becomes blurry, and this time lapse adds an important element to the experience of the image, as if the features of the subject are moving in front of us, as if we can see the subject breathing in a still image.