Project-Eva

"It's not about a sex doll, but all about our solitary existence in contemporary society."

"So how much is it?" "She's expensive," Brian, a representative of a silicone sex doll company in Japan, told me on the phone. "However, she's not going to leave you behind or die. She's going to stay there with you forever as she looks now."

A month later, I received a giant box from a sweating FedEx deliveryman. I sat down in front of the box, box cutter in hand. My hands were trembling slightly as the cutter went along the taped line. I eventually opened the box. It was a Monday afternoon—December 29, 2014—the very first day I met her.

"Eva, your name is Eva."

I began photographing dolls in 2001 to listen to their voices and see their secret lives once again as I did in my childhood. And after a few years of inviting them into a staged photographic world, I started asking myself, "Why do I really photograph dolls?"

It was loneliness. I know what people want and how to make them happy—I talk, drink, and sing with them all the time. However, I find myself home alone when I wake up in my bed. I always face emptiness when I come home from work or parties. I feel lonely in the crowd. I feel the loneliest in my biggest moments of happiness. This is because I am now afraid of what comes next. I believed in eternity when I was an innocent child. I had faith that my family, friends, and love would last forever—and remain with me—as long as I did my best for them. However, people, moments, and memories I wanted to last forever have left, died, or disappeared, and I know the rest of them will do the same. Seeing them leave does not get easier, no matter how many times I have been through it. That loneliness is why I became interested in photographing dolls. I know that human-like yet inanimate objects are not going anywhere. But then I questioned myself again. "What if I create an artificial eternity? What if I give a doll a new birth with a new identity? What if I make the one stay with me forever in the fantasy world I construct?"

We live among human beings—creatures capable of speaking to one another and sharing emotions. And yet, some prefer the company of dogs or cats; others confide in artificial intelligence within virtual worlds, seeking comfort there. Robots, originally built to replace human labor, are now being pushed toward a final frontier: thinking like humans and forming emotional bonds with them. When human beings surround us everywhere, why do we still wander in search of something to take their place—and does that make us somehow wrong? Or are we simply more easily wounded than others—a little lonelier than the rest?

For the project titled "Project-Eva"—named after 'Eve,' the first woman in Abrahamic creation myths, and the concept of eternity—Eva and I have an uncanny relationship that began the day she came out of a box. We sleep and wake up together. We go shopping, dining, driving, and even travel together just like ordinary people do in their real lives. We laugh and cry; we feel happy and lonely. In this artificial eternity I constructed, I hope my work will serve as a catalyst—provoking questions about our solitary existence in contemporary society.