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I start my work by making monochrome photographs and then painting them. I begin with a fairy tale and add eroticism to it in order to create original erotic stories. Each story is composed of roughly five to ten images, which form a story. These tales inspired in me a form of erotic delusion. However, as there were only a few fairy tales that could inspire me in this way, I began to write my own stories through images. By making my own fables, I was able to create even more images of this erotic, fairy tale-inspired nature. An overall allegorical, erotic and original story is in this way created through each of my series. |
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Ken-ichi Murata
I start my work by making monochrome photographs and then painting them. I begin with a fairy tale and add eroticism to it in order to create original erotic stories. Each story is composed of roughly five to ten images, which form a story. These tales inspired in me a form of erotic delusion. However, as there were only a few fairy tales that could inspire me in this way, I began to write my own stories through images. By making my own fables, I was able to create even more images of this erotic, fairy tale-inspired nature. An overall allegorical, erotic and original story is in this way created through each of my series.
There is a strong and consistent plotline in the stories: a girl is wandering in a parallel world and is caught and raped by a demon. In one version, she resists strongly. In the other version, she assimilates or gets used to what happens to her. This example of a mutated world as well as the demon itself can represent either death or the model’s own personal troubles. In the end, the model is enclosed by the mysterious world and she sleeps. In this way, it resembles the narrative of “The Sleeping Beauty.”
However, my story is different because the girl wakes up on her own—without any need of a prince. I have personally been becoming more familiar with death while taking these photographs, and so there is a certain resonance between the sublime images and our own fear of death.
By becoming accustomed to these images, we can come closer to our fear of death. I am not entirely certain, but I think that my kind of eroticism is similar to that found in primitive religions. In a secret attic, a story with its own language unfolds before me, it is a kind of dark magic, and this is precisely what I photograph and then paint. This is my ideal creative moment and this creative act is a new way to face my fear of death.
