A 207-photo collection of Nagai Botanical Garden on June 17, 2022, focusing on an empty morning hydrangea path. Set to ten selections from Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words performed by Kyohei Sorita, beginning with “Duet,” this work records a quiet dialogue with the hydrangea garden.

Nagai Botanical Garden, June 17, 2022.
This is a record from exactly four years ago today.
The video consists of 207 photographs.
Cabbage white butterflies, a grey heron, dragonflies, carp, and hydrangeas.
For me, this may be the finest work I have ever made of the hydrangeas at Nagai Botanical Garden.
Until then, I had not known the true beauty of Nagai Botanical Garden, and I had photographed hydrangeas mainly at Kyoto Botanical Gardens.
But when I discovered the hydrangea garden at Nagai, I was deeply moved by its beauty.
I even felt that it would not be an exaggeration to call it the finest hydrangea garden in Japan.
On this day, I went to the garden early because I wanted to photograph the hydrangea path before anyone else arrived.
The sky, as I remember it, was cloudy.
That made the light of the early morning soft, and the colors of the hydrangeas were captured without being washed out.
With no people in sight, the hydrangea garden had the quietness and moist beauty that belong only to a rainy-season morning.
It felt as if the hydrangeas were answering the love I had always felt for the hydrangea garden of Nagai Botanical Garden.
The hydrangeas bloomed while holding the soft light of the rainy season.
Along the path, there was a clear stillness that could be captured only in the hours before people arrived.
Cabbage white butterflies moved lightly among the flowers.
Dragonflies carried the atmosphere of the water.
Carp slowly marked the passage of time beneath the surface of the pond.
And then, the grey heron.
The grey heron at Nagai Botanical Garden always has a special presence.
Flowers, water, birds, and insects.
When all of them gather naturally within one landscape, the true richness of a botanical garden appears.
The photographs from this day are very good.
There is no dramatic event here.
Yet each image contains the air of early summer, the light of the rainy season, the moist atmosphere of the hydrangea garden, and the quiet time of living creatures.
The music is a selection of ten pieces from Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words.
The pianist is Kyohei Sorita.
The total length is 27 minutes and 56 seconds.
For this work, I chose to begin the music with Duet.
That is because the empty morning hydrangea garden and I seemed to be performing a duet together.
The path without people, the moist hydrangeas, the quiet light.
I was there with my camera, and the hydrangea garden was there, silently blooming.
I wanted the beginning of the music to recreate that quiet exchange.
As the title Songs Without Words suggests, this music contains songs that do not need language.
It fits the colors of the hydrangeas, the stillness of the empty path, the movement of the cabbage white butterflies, the presence of the grey heron, the flight of the dragonflies, and the quiet motion of the carp.
Not words, but music speaks.
Not explanation, but photographs speak.
Nagai Botanical Garden, June 17, 2022.
A beautiful rainy-season morning record that truly existed there, four years ago today.
And a photo collection in which the hydrangeas seemed to answer the love I had for the hydrangea garden of Nagai Botanical Garden.