YELLOW SPOT (2017 onwards) – One day, a two-year-old pointed to a mark on the street and said “yellow paint!”. As would any parent, I thoughtlessly asked him to stand on the spot for a photograph. Bemused, he complied. Over the next number of years, we would make it a point to pass by the yellow spot and make photographs, although not always with the same compliance.

When said two-year-old turned three, he was given his grandad’s old compact digital camera and a mini power game ensued. He would have me stand on the spot much like I did him. We sometimes even competed to get there first. The yellow spot became part of the fabric of our photo-walks around Yanaka. Without him, I still stop and rephotograph it out of respect for it changing, or rather its submission to natural forces and artificial ones. It remains for me (and hopefully for him and my daughter) a marker of self-location for thinking about perspectives on space and time.

There is only a hint of chronology intended in the presentation of these images, best embodied by my daughter’s early years. The rest is as experienced, often out of joint.