鉄の風景 　 Landscape of Iron

I had long been fascinated by the presence of what looked like an oil slick floating on the red water of a marshy area.
One day, a friend who climbed with me told me that this was a film produced by iron-oxidizing bacteria.
A few years later, I had the opportunity to do a residency in the town of Bilpin, Australia.
I spent my days walking in the bush as part of my research. Everywhere along the way, I saw red water and iridescent membranes that I thought might be the home of iron-oxidizing bacteria. The area around the town has a lot of sandstone formations, and the sandstone acts as a sponge to store water, and the water seeps out of the rocks. There are many places where water seeps out of the rocks. The fact that it is a borderline where water is supplied with oxygen as it seeps out of the rocks, and we speculated that the high iron content of the earth and the fact that the
water flows slowly in many places produced a large number of iron-oxidizing bacteria. The film produced by the iron-oxidizing bacteria has a complex metallic sheen, and I decided to capture it on paper.
I gently placed the paper on top of the film and slowly lifted it up, taking my time.
This simple process is never the same twice, depending on the temperature, weather, location, and time of collection.
Starting with the use of iron oxide from iron-oxidizing bacteria as a material, we learned about the cycle of iron oxidation and reduction in the natural world.
I began to think about our life activities in which iron is an essential factor, the mighty magnetic field that surrounds the earth, and the complexity of our interrelationships with each other.