2011年，在一个十字路口偶遇一对鹿后，金奈川县的摄影师Yoko Ishii决定把镜头对准奈良的动物居民。奈良是日本的古都，梅花鹿在这里几乎随处可见。
虽然鹿在日本大部分地区被认为是一种害虫，但在奈良它们是神圣的;他们不仅受到法律的保护，而且还受到历史的保护，历史将他们铭记为神所尊崇的伙伴。直到17世纪，在奈良，捕杀鹿仍然是非法的;尽管每年都有很多游客死于喂食时发生的事故。石井的作品捕捉到了一个城市的奇异之处，在这个城市里，这些鹿被排除在人类创造的等级结构之外。在她的系列作品《越过边界》中，她拍摄了奈良和宫岛鹿群在它们的本土栖息地生活的照片，这是出乎人们意料的。在接下来的超现实选择的图片中，石井只在她的框架内捕捉了鹿。它们走在大街上，走进礼品店，在十字路口停下来喂它们的幼崽。它们生活在一个人造的世界里，在这个世界里，人类奇怪地消失了，它们似乎统治着世界。
After stumbling upon a pair of deer at an intersection in 2011, Kanagawa-based photographer Yoko Ishii decided to turn her camera on the animal inhabitants of Nara: the ancient capital of Japan where Sika deer are almost commonplace as people.
Whilst deer are considered a pest in much of Japan, they are sacred in Nara; protected not only by law but by a history that remembers them as the gods’ revered companions. Punishable by death until the 1600s, killing deer remains illegal in Nara; though annually, many tourists die in accidents whilst feeding them. Ishii’s work captures the strangeness of a city in which these deer are exempt from the hierarchical structure that humans have created. In her series ‘Beyond the Border’, she has photographed the deers of Nara and Miyajima Island in their native habitats—which are not what one would expect. In the surreal selection of images that follow, Ishii has taken care to capture only deer within her frame. They walk down streets, into gift shops, and stop to feed their fawns at intersections, existing in a man-made world where man is oddly absent, and they appear to reign supreme.
Author: ©Yoko Ishii
Project: Beyond the Border
Location: Japan • Nara