a photographer in the family

I like to call myself a photographer. Before moving to Japan I worked with photography, and apart from my art photography, I still manage to do the odd photo jobs here. My family aside, writing and photography are my passions in life. I remember when I was a kid and my dad showed me his camera, how I felt it was the most magical creation ever. The time when he let me take the camera out into a little river in the Swedish mountains to take a photo of the water is etched into my memory. Sharing the passion of photography with my dad has been one of the most important areas of contact growing up, and something I have dreamt of emulating with my son.

The other night I woke up by a sound. It took me a little while to figure out what it was – the sound of a photo being taken with a smartphone. Click. Click. Click. Before going to bed me and my wife always turn off the sound on our phones. On my wife’s phone however, unlike mine that is set up in Sweden, the sound of taking photos cannot be turned off. In Japan there seems to be a rule that prevent phones from disabling the sound of the camera in order to make sneaky photography more difficult, so what woke me was the sound of my wife’s phone taking photos.

I turned around and opened my eyes, only to see our little son quietly sitting up next to my sleeping wife, holding her phone in his hand (which made me a bit unsure if I actually still was sleeping and was having one of those very realistic dreams). Not only had he managed to find her phone, he had also managed to turn on the camera and was now happily taking one photo after another. Click. Click. Click. Click.

After having relieved him of the phone, looking at him going back to sleep next to his mum, I could not fall asleep myself – I lay marveling at this experience, day dreaming (or maybe I should say night dreaming) about being able to share photography with my son. What a beautiful dream.