The art of losing love.
The more one blows on a fire trying to put it out, the larger the flame becomes. One stops blowing. The cold blue of the flame changes to a soft red.
Why is that I tried to extinguish that warm, gentle fire? - Seiichi Furuya, 1996
It's the cycle which I have been devouring Bronte's Jane Eyre and relishing in Furuya's photographs of his deceased wife that has allowed me to lament because I draw this connection between the two. I was going to write an essay about him but I couldn't form words to even begin that task so I let it be. I just took all his work into my heart instead, where it makes more sense than it ever could on a piece of paper.
From the first day I met her, I began to photograph her regularly. Sometimes I have seen her as a woman passing by, sometimes as a model, sometimes as the woman I love, sometimes as the woman that belongs at my side. By seeing and photographing her, by looking as her in the pictures, I am finding myself. - Furuya, 1980.
My wife, Christine, took her life by leaping from the ninth floor of the building where we were living in Berlin-Ost. She was, for me, the closest person and also the most unknown. Photography was the best way for me to know more about her, and about our relationship. Since she died, I have not photographed my family. - Furuya, 1991.
Seiichi Furuya.