The Observer - Gone with the Wind
UK’s magazine The Observer contacted me to illustrate an article about the wind phone, a disconnected telephone booth in Japan where people come to speak to the loved ones they have lost.
The original wind phone was set up by Itaru Sasaki in his hilltop garden in Ōtsuchi, after the death of his cousin. When the 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck the region, he opened it to the public, and tens of thousands of people have made the pilgrimage since. The line leads nowhere: the idea is that words which cannot travel down a regular phone line are carried by the wind. Similar booths have since appeared in other countries.
I wanted to express the serenity of a slightly wild garden, while showing the wind moving through the plants: the wind that carries the words of the living to those who are gone.
