Chino Otsuka

Chino Otsuka is a Japanese-British artist who works with photography and digital manipulation. In Imagine Finding Me, she uses Photoshop to place her adult self into photographs from her childhood archive, creating the illusion that she is physically present in her own past. The work explores memory, identity, and the relationship between past and present self.

I encountered this project at Huis Marseille, where the images were presented in small framed prints on the wall. This presentation forced you to physically move closer to the work in order to see the details. The series shows the same two figures repeatedly, which made me question the relationship between them and the meaning of their presence across different moments in time.

What draws me to this work is the way she uses Photoshop as a kind of digital time machine, allowing her to literally step into her own memories. It makes me think about how photography can be used not only to document the past, but also to reconstruct and possibly rediscover oneself.