The Tourist of Her Own History

Old photographs carry something that doesn’t translate to words—the particular quality of pastness, the way a child you once were looks back at you from a fixed moment and you realize you have no real access to what that child was thinking. Chino Otsuka decided to enter that space anyway. The Tokyo-born, London-based photographer took childhood images from her years growing up in 1970s Japan and photoshopped herself into them—adult Chino standing beside child Chino on a beach, sitting nearby at a restaurant, present in a moment that predates her adult existence by decades.

The digital process became a tool, she said. I felt as if I were in a time machine, becoming a tourist of my own history. That word—tourist—does a lot of work. A tourist goes somewhere they don’t belong, looks at things from outside, and cannot stay. You can place yourself in the image. You just can’t pretend you were ever really there.

What makes the series work is that Otsuka doesn’t try to hide the seam. The composite nature of the images is visible: adult and child share the frame with different textures, different grain, a subtle difference in the quality of their light. The impossibility is admitted rather than disguised. You can go back. You just can’t change anything while you’re there.

I’ve thought about what I’d choose if I tried something similar. Which childhood photo. How close I’d stand to myself. Whether the kid would recognize me or find me suspicious. Probably the latter—kids are better at that than we give them credit for.