This photo slideshow was held to introduce the photographer Hidehiro Ohtake, with his photos of romanticized nature.  The slideshow caused the audience to contemplate the link between nature and human beings, and present and past. He introduced photos taken during his trip to “North Woods” in North America and showed his experience of the sense of unity in wild nature from his perspective as one human being.

Hidehiro Ohtake was associated with photographs and the “Wandervogel” (hiking) activity since he was university student. He visited “North Woods” in the north side of Minnesota in 1999 for the first time. Since then, he has been active as a photographer expressing the “meaning” of wildness and the relationship between nature and human beings.

In his narrative about the photos from the three-week trip to North Woods, he introduced his experience and thought, which came across in his mind: canoes are man-made but they are a very much environmentally-accepted boat to use in lakes and forests. There was a photograph of a mural painting by Native Americans, and a photo of newly brought life sprouted after massive forest fire. His narrative of all these experience would have tempted the audience to fall into the mythic space, North Woods, as wild nature.

He concluded the slideshow with the words quoted from his trip partner, Wein: the first week of the trip is for falling away from everyday life, the second week is for “being in the forest”, and the last week is for going back to everyday life. It was a time travel to the dim and distant past to touch the connection to the past.