A narrow opening between curtains lets summer light into a dark room. Someone lies beneath a light blanket. Chihiro Sugita made the photograph during the pandemic, in a period when going outside was difficult. Today, that ordinary-looking moment has become one of the pictures Chihiro returns to with particular affection.
Time has changed its meaning. It has not, in Chihiro’s view, increased its value at the expense of other photographs. That distinction is central to a practice built around the people, objects and small spaces closest to home.
Continuing a family album
Chihiro is a photographer based in Osaka, Japan, who studied photography at a vocational school and mainly photographs everyday life on film. The interest began much earlier, with the pleasure of looking through childhood albums.
The date-stamped prints made by Chihiro’s father with a small compact film camera were especially fascinating. Later, a compact digital camera received as a birthday present went everywhere: to school, on outings and into time spent with friends.
Back then, Chihiro sometimes wished it were possible to make a photograph simply by blinking. The attraction was to photographs themselves more than to cameras as objects. Making pictures today feels like continuing the story begun in those family albums.
“I believe my perspective and emotions remain in the pictures I take.”
“Photography is like a mirror to me.” Even when Chihiro is absent from the frame, the choice of what to look at can reveal something about the person behind the camera. A loved one’s gaze, or an object repeatedly photographed, can become a way of recognising oneself.
Starting within five metres
Chihiro’s recurring subjects include the room at home and the world within a radius of about five metres: people, favourite records, clothes, stuffed animals and familiar belongings. These things matter because they exist in relation to the photographer.
Chihiro calls this approach “Glocal Journalist”. The phrase describes starting with what is nearby as a way into the wider world. Paying close attention to a small environment can lead to questions that extend beyond it.
The range of what feels photographable has widened over time. Early pictures concentrated on beauty and positive experiences. Chihiro now also notices irony and difficult aspects of everyday life. There is no need to spell out every private example for that shift to matter: it changes what the camera is allowed to include.
A room remembered differently
When describing the photograph in bed, Chihiro recalls mental health difficulties that made leaving home hard for both partners during the pandemic. Even on a sunny summer day, they might remain indoors together under a light blanket.
Life is different now. Chihiro and their partner enjoy going out and photographing each other. Looking back at the room means remembering a time when their attention was turned inward, towards themselves and their immediate surroundings.
The photograph has become more precious as that period recedes. It offers a record of how life felt then, without requiring the present to look the same.
Equal value does not mean identical meaning
Chihiro makes a firm distinction between selecting pictures for others and deciding whether a photograph deserves to exist. A technically awkward or amateurish image does not lose its place in the archive.
“To me, every photograph has equal value.”
There are reasons to keep a picture private, particularly if sharing it could harm someone. But embarrassment about technique is not, for Chihiro, a reason to dismiss the photograph itself. Given the right circumstances, Chihiro would be happy for people to see the whole archive.
That position leaves room for change. One image can become more personally significant years later, while another means something different than it once did. Neither change makes the remaining pictures less worthy of being kept.
Returning to Hiroshima through a zine
Chihiro lived in Hiroshima for two years, but much of that time was spent travelling between school and the dormitory. After leaving, there was a feeling of having missed the city itself. Returning meant walking its streets, reconnecting with friends and taking photographs.
The resulting graduation project holds two experiences of Hiroshima together. For many people, the city is associated with the atomic bombing of 1945. For Chihiro, it is also a place of friendship and ordinary daily life. The work asks how historical memory and the lives continuing around it coexist.
These photographs are not intended as direct documentation of the bombing or its history. They trace a personal attempt to reconnect with Hiroshima and understand it from both perspectives. This is another expression of Chihiro’s “Glocal Journalist” approach: beginning with a lived relationship to a place and opening it onto a wider question.
In 2026, Chihiro revisited the graduation work and turned it into a photo zine. The photographs now meet a different point in the photographer’s life. Working with them again allows the earlier experience to be considered from the present.
Chihiro remembers Instagram as a place where posting one photograph with a considered caption could feel both casual and meaningful. The platform and the wider environment around images have changed, in Chihiro’s experience. Zines and conversations offer other ways to give photographs attention.
Keeping a physical trace
Film matters partly because it connects Chihiro to the family photographs that first inspired the practice. The physical negative is another attraction: having an object that carries the image feels meaningful. Chihiro is also fascinated by the chemistry involved in making photographic images.
An iPhone has a place too. Its immediacy makes it possible to photograph something as soon as the impulse arrives. The choice between devices depends on the moment and mood, without erasing Chihiro’s particular attachment to film.
“Photographs are proof that I have lived.” For Chihiro, preserving an image means keeping a trace of a life, including the ordinary moments that might otherwise pass unnoticed.
For someone beginning, the encouragement is to enjoy preserving a moment from the limited time available to us. Chihiro puts that sense of time plainly:
“What exists right in front of us now might no longer exist even 0.1 seconds later.”
The people and things in front of the camera will change. Making a photograph gives that small part of life somewhere to remain.
Questions about Chihiro Sugita’s photography
What does “Glocal Journalist” mean in this work?
It is Chihiro’s name for beginning with the immediate surroundings — people, objects and life close to home — as a way to understand aspects of the wider world.
Does every photograph have to be shared?
No. Chihiro separates a photograph’s value from the decision to make it public, recognising that sharing an image should not cause harm to someone.
What is the Hiroshima project about?
Chihiro returned to a city once lived in to reconnect with friends and explore how its historical memory coexists with ordinary daily life. It is a personal photographic project, not direct documentation of the atomic bombing. Originally made as graduation work, it was revisited and turned into a photo zine in 2026.
Explore Chihiro Sugita’s LomoHome and the Hiroshima series. Read more perspectives on memory and everyday photography in Developing Stories.
Based on Chihiro Sugita’s written interview. Interview and editing: Emiliano Vittoriosi / Berlin Photo Studio. Photographs: Chihiro Sugita.
