As well as reflecting their shared family life, for Seiichi, many of the photographs reveal Christine’s inner-self, her personality and demeanour, even the way she held her camera. “She never aggressively imposed herself on her subjects. Instead, she always maintained a position of quiet restraint, observing from a slight distance,” says Seiichi. “She held the camera gently, always keeping the same calm and respectful distance from the people or things she chose to photograph.” Seiichi adds that Christine would often take two photographs consecutively, seemingly haunted by “a lingering uncertainty”. There was one exception to this predisposition, however; when Christine captured Seiichi asleep. Here, Christine used a macro lens, leaving only a few centimetres between the lens and Seiichi’s face. Seiichi recalls it was “almost as if she were conducting a CT scan”. He continues: “It felt as though she was trying to peer into my mind and understand what I was thinking – trying to capture something invisible inside me.”
When asked what it felt like, as a photographer, to have the camera turned on himself, Seiichi says that whilst it hasn’t happened often, he has no particular aversion to it. “That was especially true when Christine photographed me,” Seiichi continues. “She never once insisted on taking pictures or asked to do so – it always happened naturally and quietly, as part of the flow of the moment.” The process was simple, Seiichi would stop, look at Christine, with her never – bar once asking him to remove his glasses – requesting his changing position or expression. Much like the photos of him sleeping, Seiichi saw this creative process as a cipher for their relationship, a new means for connection and communication. “The photographs themselves weren’t what mattered,” Seiichi says. “Rather, I believe we were engaging in a kind of silent conversation – brief as it may have been – through the act of photographing one another.”
By 1983, Christine had all but stopped taking photographs due to increasing ill-mental health, and even when in 1985 she did briefly pick her camera back up, Seiichi says that she no longer turned her camera on him. “In other words, she had stopped engaging in that silent dialogue with me,” he says. Christine Furuya-Gössler Photographs (1978–1985) is a moving testament to the self actualising power of creation, and the traces of existence that the oft-photographed Christine left behind, with her own mind, her own eyes and her own hands.