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Miki has produced “The Path Of Million Pens” at Photobook As Object in 2015, and “Internal Notebook” at Photobook Master Class in 2017.
This work, “YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime” was created through the mentorship program by Yumi Goto of RPS.

After her mother-in-law passed away after a long battle with illness, Hasegawa began to feel regret and loss, and began to think about how to remember and accept the death of a family member.
In this project, she will trace her life through her mother-in-law’s album and discuss the death of loved ones.

YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime

I had thought it would be better for everyone in the family to go on with life as usual, until death became an unavoidable subject for us all.

My mother-in-law was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma in September 2016, and immediately underwent surgery and chemotherapy, but within a year her cancer had returned. We’d exhausted all possible forms of surgery and treatment.

Despite this, she was her usual energetic self – she kept up with her daily routines, busying herself with housework as usual, and even keeping up with her exercise regime.

My mother-in-law’s condition quickly deteriorated after the doctor told her to stay at home. We fed her what seemed like fistfuls of pills after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We arranged home visits with the doctor and set up a rented home-care bed on the first floor. Within days came the wheelchair, and then the bedpan. And finally, her body could only accept a liquid diet.

Unfamiliar with the extent of what her care would entail, my family and I soon were overwhelmed and exhausted by the mental and physical toll of it all. After an in-home check-up, her doctor, noticing that the regimen was becoming too much for us, took us aside and proposed:

“Why don’t you put your mother-in-law in hospice for a week to give the family a break?”

A few days later, the doctor’s proposal became an order. “She has to be admitted to hospice. She may have only one week left to live,” her doctor warned us.

In the cab on the way to the hospice, my mother-in-law, who had always been a brave woman, squeezed my hand. “I’m scared,” she said.
When we arrived, the doctor suggested we put her on a morphine drip to make her comfortable. My mother-in-law turned to me and asked, “what do you think?”
But I couldn’t answer.
The next day, I said, “If the pain is so bad shouldn’t you do it?”
She agreed to the morphine.

Delirium from the cancer and morphine had set in, and soon we couldn’t communicate with her at all.
“The plane…” she said, looking confused and distant. She fell silent. It would be the last thing she ever said to us. We never heard her voice again after that.

Every day, I picked up my daughter from school and we would travel straight to the hospice together. Feeling suffocated by the looming presence of death, we would walk through the hospice grounds together, taking in all its perfectly kept trees and flowers. It was in these moments that the contrast between life and death was almost tangible.
In a quiet lounge of the hospice, the ticking of a beautiful clock was heard, my mother-in-law would surely love it. 

On June 27, 2018, just one week after her arrival at the hospice, my mother-in-law took her last breath.

Consumed by grief, my father-in-law cried whenever we mentioned my mother-in-law, and while sifting through her medical reports, he would blame himself for not having done enough to spot her cancer earlier.” He seemed to have been visiting the hospice to see the nurse a few times, hoping he could talk to someone, other than his family, who knew about his wife’s last moments.

As for my husband, he seemed like he couldn’t accept her illness nor her death.
My daughter however, remained emotionless, never shedding a single tear.

About six months later, I found my father-in-law organizing old pictures. Then, from the storage room under the stairs, came out a cardboard box that was filled with tons of albums.
Flipping through the albums, he said,
“I begged her to marry me.”
Like my father-in-law, I picked up the album and retraced the life of my mother in-law through the album.
And there, I found hand-written words next to a picture of the two, which was taken when they were first lovers. “YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime”

The “you” that was supposed to be with us was no longer there.
The two figures in the back, sitting on the sofa, have become one, and the two voices we used to hear from downstairs have been replaced by the sound of the TV that echoes all day long.
The orchid she had been growing in the kitchen was in full bloom.

Translations and English Proofreading : Christo Geoghegan, Megan Saltzman, Jinhwa Chang
—

“YOU AND ME everyday everywhere everytime” artist book by Miki Hasegawa
13,200 JPY
Language: Japanese or English
Page: 264page
Size: 170mm x208 mm x 38mm
68 editions only (all made to order)
Each edition will be signed and give the edition number by the artist
***The photo on the cover is different for all 68 copies. You cannot choose one, so please look forward to receiving your copy.
Photo / Edit / Binding / Print: Miki Hasegawa
The book concept and art direction by Yumi Goto / Reminders Photography Stronghold
Photo courtesy of Noriko Hasegawa, Kenzo Hasegawa, Tomohiro Hasegawa, Chiyu Hasegawa

SOLD OUT !!  Thank you so much!
ORDER : http://reminders-project.org/rps/internalnotebook_ceibasaleen/

Miki Hasegawa developed her dummy book titled “Quiet…” to later become the photobook “Internal Notebook” in the workshop “Photo Book Masterclass” in 2015 given by the Dutch book designers Teun van der Heijden and Sandra van der Doelen, and Yumi Goto, the director of Reminders Photography Stronghold.
After the workshop, Miki had further improved the book under the mentorship of Yumi, published limited edition of 66, and held a book launch exhibition at RPS.
After the 66 editions were sold out, her dummy won special mention at PHOTOBOOX 2017, a part of an international photo festival PHOTOLUX in Lucca, Italy.
This award led this dummy to be published as trader’s edition of 500 copies with the collaboration with an Italian publisher CEIBA EDITIONS.
The cover design and binding technique have been renewed, and part of the images has been re-edited.
It is now bilingual, Japanese and English. CEIBA edition photobook is a faithful reproduction of original photobook by Miki.

RPS is now accepting pre-orders before the book launch scheduled in July.

With her own anxiety that she could have abused her daughter, Miki Hasegawa started her research on child abuse cases.
Hasegawa interviewed the child abuse victims, photographed their portraits, and collected and edited materials that summon up their childhood memories such as their diaries, notebooks, and photos.
This project “Internal Notebook” is her attempt at visualizing the invisible sufferings and traumas of the abused children from her own perspective as a mother and a possible child abuser.

『Internal Notebook』

In March 2016, the Japanese Academy of Pediatrics announced that they estimated 350 children across the country died due to abuse. According to the Ministry of Health, Education, and Welfare’s tally, roughly 90 children per year die due to abuse, including forced double suicide. So 260 children’s deaths are being overlooked.

This girl, who experienced violence and abusive speech in the home from the age of 3, is suffering hearing loss as an aftereffect. This boy’s younger brother was killed by their father when he was five, and he continued to suffer physical abuse after that. When this girl was in the second grade, she was left to live alone with only a 10000-Yen note, with no water or electricity supply, and she personally requested help from Child Services.

The men and women who I met told me: “I wasn’t left with any large, visible scars or bruises. The physical violence and abusive language I experienced for many years, the mental control, the sexual abuse, the negation of my individuality, and the neglect, aren’t visible, but they leave major scars which don’t go away. It’s hard to take, but other people can’t see this pain.” They suffer depression, self-harm, dissociation, panic attacks, PTSD, and other ailments, but one cannot see these injuries unless one actively looks for them. And they have written in notebooks about their hard-to-understand emotional pain.

The “Internal Notebook” is a notebook of the emotional cries of children raised in abusive homes. I have taken portraits of them, along with the diaries and notebooks they have kept.

I have also tried to show what their parents were like by arranging their childhood photographs and important possessions that evoke memories of those days. It seemed to me that their parents were no different from the rest of us in thinking that we were normal parents.

The people in this book do not only feel hatred and resentment toward their parents. There are those who feel anger at themselves, unchangeable sadness, and even question whether they must forgive their parents as they desperately keep themselves alive. So we can see that the ones who tormented them were not just their parents but other adults in society as well.

MIKI HASEGAWA / Internal Notebook
228 pages / ENGLISH AND JAPANESE BILINGUAL
Size : 178mm x 228mm x 32mm
Pages, Photos : 228 pages / 88 photographs / 16 inserts / 17 folds
500 editions only
All signed
Photobooks will be signed, and come with a double-printed B2 size sheet, made by the printer where the book was produced. (those images on the sheets are not included in the photobook. We will choose the image for you.)

ORDER : http://reminders-project.org/rps/internalnotebooksale/
SOLD OUT !!  Thank you so much!

Internal Notebook

In March 2016, the Japanese Academy of Pediatrics announced that they estimated 350 children across the country died due to abuse. According to the Ministry of Health, Education, and Welfare’s tally, roughly 90 children per year die due to abuse, including forced double suicide. So 260 children’s deaths are being overlooked.　

This girl, who experienced violence and abusive speech in the home from the age of 3, is suffering hearing loss as an aftereffect. This boy’s younger brother was killed by their father when he was five, and he continued to suffer physical abuse after that. When this girl was in the second grade, she was left to live alone with only a 10000-Yen note, with no water or electricity supply, and she personally requested help from Child Services.

The men and women who I met told me : “I wasn’t left with any large, visible scars or bruises. The physical violence and abusive language I experienced for many years, the mental control, the sexual abuse, the negation of my individuality, and the neglect, aren’t visible, but they leave major scars which don’t go away. It’s hard to take, but other people can’t see this pain.” They suffer depression, self-harm, dissociation, panic attacks, PTSD, and other ailments, but one cannot see these injuries unless one actively looks for them. And they have written in notebooks about their hard-to-understand emotional pain.

The “Internal Notebook” is a notebook of the emotional cries of children raised in abusive homes. I have taken portraits of them, along with the diaries and notebooks they have kept.
I have also tried to show what their parents were like by arranging their childhood photographs and important possessions that evoke memories of those days. It seemed to me that their parents were no different from the rest of us in thinking that we were normal parents.

The people in this book do not only feel hatred and resentment toward their parents. There are those who feel anger at themselves, unchangeable sadness, and even question whether they must forgive their parents as they desperately keep themselves alive. So we can see that the ones who tormented them were not just their parents but other adults in society as well.

MIKI HASEGAWA

Hardcover: 184 pages+Family album archival:25pages
101 original images, 71 Family album archival images
Languages: Japanese and English edition
Size: 232mm x 170mm
66 editions only (all made to order) all signed and given the edition number by the artist
Photo/ Text / Edit / Print / Bookbinding :Miki Hasegawa
13,000 JPY (plus shipping fee)
English proofreading by Steven V-L Lee, Miyuki Okuyama

**IMPORTANT: This artist book will be made to order all process by the artist, to complete and dispatch your order, it may take two to three months. You’ll be notified when it’s dispatched by Japanese Postal service via email. 

Concept, edit and art-direction: developed in the 2015 photo book making masterclass by Yumi Goto, Sandra van der Doelen and Teun van der Heijden, in collaboration with Reminders Photography Stronghold.

Along with the launch of this book, Hasegawa opens her solo exhibition “Internal Notebook” from November 3th to 26th.

This books so far shortlisted and awarded by following organizations.
Kassel Dummy Award (Kassel, 2017)
Special mention:
PhotoBoox Award, Photolux Festival (Lucca, 2017)
Unseen Photo Fair Dummy Award(Amsterdam, 2017)
Winner:
The 7th Dali International Photography Exhibition Publication Award (Dali, 2017)

ORDER ：http://reminders-project.org/rps/thepathofmillionpenssaleen/

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TITLE :  "THE PATH OF MILLION PENS"
PHOTOGRAPHER :  MIKI HASEGAWA
TEXT BY : MIKI HASEGAWA
LANGUAGE OF TEXT :  Japanese / English
ISBN :  None
PUBLISHER : Self-publishing
CITY OF PUBLISHER : JAPAN
YEAR PUBLISHED : 2014
BINDING : SOFTCOVER, JAPANESE BINDING
NO. OF PAGES : 82
NO. OF ILLUSTRATIONS : 82

TYPE OF ILLUSTRATIONS : FOUR-COLOR
TRIM DIMENSIONS : 182 × 257mm
100 editions only, it also comes with a postcard.  
DISTRIBUTOR  :  REMINDERS PHOTOGRAPHY STRONGHOLD

When I got married, my surname changed.
 And when I gave birth, I was referred to only as "Mama." Who was I?
Searching for my true self, I pulled out a picture album from my childhood that was stashed in a cardboard box.
As I turned the pages, I felt my memory coming back to me.
 I also found albums that belonged to my mother and grandmother.
The episodes come together and became a family history.
This family history was a proof of my existence.