From the Hip | Yoshihiko Ueda | Aka Aka 2025 [FIRST PRINTING]

This book brings together 600 photographs selected from Yoshihiko Ueda’s retrospective exhibition held at The Museum of Modern Art, Hayama from July to November 2025. The collection spans Ueda’s entire career.

"A photograph records a certain person on a certain day, at a certain time, in a certain place.

A few years later, or a few decades, it faithfully conveys to the viewer the moment in which it was taken, exactly as it was. The more casual, the more unplanned the photo, the more vividly it shows the situation at that moment,raw and unvarnished, even with the passing of time.

Why is this? To my mind, photographs have an innate capacity to be open in all directions.

But the more dominant the thought processes of the person using a photograph, or the person who took it, or the power of their purpose or intention, the more likely that capacity will only unfurl in a limited direction.

So when looking at a photo, I try to truly open my eyes and take in the world in a fashion more free, and unfettered. (p.5)

Bizarrely, what I remember most vividly about my travels,

may be the things I never got to photograph.

I suppose the fact that I was unable to leave something in a photo, unable to capture it,

is automatically etched on my eyeballs and in my mind.

Most of my travels fade into the mist of the past, and gradually disappear.

Transmitting one's personal memories adequately to people is difficult.

How beautiful a particular scene was, how harsh.

But the thing about photos is, all you need to do is look, and that moment comes flooding back as if it were yesterday.

Which is why I travel with a miraculous device that enables that very thing: the camera.(p.244)" - Yoshihiko Ueda