My grandmother’s house, where she had been living for the past 40 years, was demolished this April because of an urban development project. When my family started helping clear out her house, we couldn’t understand why she had kept so many random and unnecessary things. We were almost angry at my grandmother for hoarding things that she no longer needed. However, at one point, I realized that her memories were strongly tied to those random objects. When I showed her my mother’s baby clothes to ask if it was okay to throw them away, she started telling a story about when my mother was a baby and wearing them. The story was very detailed, as if it had happened yesterday. For my grandmother, all the things in her house are fragments of her memories. She is 91 years old now, and her memory is deteriorating. She knows it, too. That is why everything is important to her. Losing those things is like losing part of her memories, like losing part of who she is. For this reason, I decided to photograph her house and the things in it that would soon be thrown away. We cannot keep everything or remember every moment, but at the very least, having photographs of something with sentimental value can remind us of mundane but meaningful moments of our lives.

Yuki Furusawa (1992, Akita, JP) lives and works in Niigata (JP). She completed her Master of Arts in Photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Hong Kong in 2017. She has been shortlisted for several photobook awards, including the ‘BUP Book Award’ in 2024, the ‘Charta Award’ in 2022 and the ‘Fiebre Dummy Award’ in 2018. In 2021, she participated in an artist residency in Ashikaga (JP), where she also exhibited her work. Her works have been shown in Hong Kong, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan.

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