Kosuke Okahara
Interview (2021)
Could you tell us about the music, culture, or scenes that you were into during your youth?I wasn’t really someone who was interested in culture, so there really isn’t much to say. I was really into soccer, and after that, I competed as an athlete in freestyle skiing until I was twenty-two.
When did you begin to have interest in photography, and what was the reason for it?Probably when I was 21—at the time, I had gone to visit a friend of mine who was working in former Yugoslavia
You weren’t influenced by photographers or photographic pieces, were you?That’s correct. I started from having an interest in journalism, and before that I had no contact with photographers or photographic pieces at all. So in the beginning, it didn’t matter to me if I was using pen, film, or anything else. But at the start, I had a hunch that film wasn’t the best fit for me, and I didn’t feel it’s appeal. I still write even to this day, but inevitably my language ability limits what I can express unless in Japanese. I feel that photos are not limited by these boundaries. Also, the pure ease of photography is also really appealing. I didn’t have the idea of doing this together with someone, and photography is something that I could undertake as long as I had a camera, which is fantastic. With that said, I wasn’t thinking too deeply about it when I started out, and I didn’t have a definite reason. I just feel that this rhythm in photography resonated with me, and that’s why I naturally gravitated toward it.
At the beginning, what sort of photographer were you aiming to become?I wanted to capture what you’d call photo-documentaries—I wanted to take photos of societal issues as a story, and present them.