Bending the Light Page #3

room and he was obsessive,

he was a mathematician,

and everything in that room

was arranged on the desk.

It was perfectly arranged,

and I felt so at peace

in that space.

My interest in Japan is not

only in historical buildings

but also in the artifice of nature.

This tree has been

manipulated and contorted

to such a point that it frames

the pavilion down below.

It's a wonderful example

of how the Japanese use

nature in a very artificial way.

My dioramas are very similar in terms of

working with the animals

when they're in deep storage.

I had access to the Smithsonian archives,

and they have all of

these taxidermy animals

in these crates.

It's the whole idea of

going out into nature,

killing these animals, bring

them back into this human realm

and for display purposes,

reanimating them.

And that is a very interesting idea.

It's perverse, but it's

wonderful in its perversity.

I'm interested in the

history of optics especially,

and who but the Japanese and the Germans

have perfected it to such a level.

What is it about that

compulsiveness, that obsessiveness,

between both cultures

that allows them to create

these fine finely, finely-crafted objects?

The idea in Buddhism is that

nothing can be perfected,

and yet, I think the

Japanese in terms of the way

that they approach lens-making for example

are attempting to achieve perfection.

- [Mitsuharu] I look at

the lens very closely,

and try to understand its feeling.

- [Voiceover] Is there

anything that you dream about

that you'd like to take pictures of?

- I'd really love to photograph secret,

and maybe even dangerous places.

I read about something that

happened at the remote base

at the South Pole.

There were two buildings

three-meters-apart,

and one had a bathroom.

On a short journey from one to the other,

someone disappeared and was never found.

The challenge of taking a

photo to capture the mystery

of that place, of that

brutal, freezing environment,

a place I would never

normally be allowed to go,

really interests me.

- The one that's most

well-known is probably

the Unabomber's cabin.

I photographed the cabin in sichew

after it had been

discovered, put on a truck

and shipped out to California.

That was a secret place,

nobody else had access to that,

and I decided because of

that access that I wanted

to make it something else.

It was this very simple, iconic shape.

A cabin in the woods, and that to me,

its banality was interesting to me.

I photographed all four

sides of the cabin,

thinking about it as mugshots,

and the whole idea of

architecture being put on trial,

this was the major piece

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