Black-and-white photographs are something special. The history of photography started black and white, even though our eyes perceive the world in color, and they do not see things in monochrome. It’s a unique world altogether. If the first photographic film had been a color film, there would probably exist no black-and-white images at all today. Nonetheless, there is some kind of magic that keeps attracting us photographers to the simplicity, the modernism, the sharpness of photos shot in black-and-white. I have spent the past seven years waiting for flowers to decay and shoot photographs to express in my own way the atmosphere of withered flowers, with all the minute details, the beautiful moods and textures of what looks like wrinkled skin. Why is it that people are entranced by flowers? Were all the beautiful designs and colorations of flowers only made to captivate us humans? (...) In order to make the monochromatic images in this series look more appealing than the color ones, I worked out quite elaborate lighting settings for the shootings. Compared to the color pictures, the results may appear more “photographic,” which means that here it is perhaps the “photograph” itself that is presented, rather than the “flower” in it.
– Afterword by Kazunali Tajima (a part)