I was fascinated at a certain point in my life with finding family photos on the internet.
I was attracted to the sense of guilt and the strange feeling of being able to see other people’s private photos, which I had nothing to do with. Things opened up in front of me that I would never usually have the chance to see.Once I reblogged a family photo on Tumblr that was probably from overseas, and there was a comment on it. It was a comment in English. It was an angry “Why do you have my father’s picture? Delete it immediately”.Of course, I did not upload this photo. Nor do I own it. It was a photo taken somewhere, uploaded to the internet by someone else, and for whatever reason, it showed up on my dashboard. If I deleted the post, the data would never disappear from the internet, but I immediately deleted that reblog.When I read the comments, I felt an eerie sensation as if I was suddenly touched by something damp and caught a glimpse of a gaze from out of nothing. Something supposed to be fiction was somehow connected to reality and haunting me. The place I believed to be safe was, from the other side, just within their reach.
I was attracted to the sense of guilt and the strange feeling of being able to see other people’s private photos, which I had nothing to do with. Things opened up in front of me that I would never usually have the chance to see.Once I reblogged a family photo on Tumblr that was probably from overseas, and there was a comment on it. It was a comment in English. It was an angry “Why do you have my father’s picture? Delete it immediately”.Of course, I did not upload this photo. Nor do I own it. It was a photo taken somewhere, uploaded to the internet by someone else, and for whatever reason, it showed up on my dashboard. If I deleted the post, the data would never disappear from the internet, but I immediately deleted that reblog.When I read the comments, I felt an eerie sensation as if I was suddenly touched by something damp and caught a glimpse of a gaze from out of nothing. Something supposed to be fiction was somehow connected to reality and haunting me. The place I believed to be safe was, from the other side, just within their reach.
–
私はネットで家族写真を見つけることに夢中になっていた時期がある。
他人のプライベートな写真を何の関係も無い私が見れてしまうことへの罪悪感と、その奇妙さに惹かれていた。普段では決して見ることのできないものが開かれているのだ。
ある時Tumblrでリブログした海外のものであろう家族写真にコメントがついていた。それは英語のコメントであったが、内容としてはなぜあなたが私の父の写真を持っているのか。すぐに消しなさいという怒りの内容だった。
もちろんこれは私がアップロードしたものではないし、正確にいうと私が所有しているものでもない。どこかで撮影した写真がネットにアップロードされ、何の因果か私のダッシュボードに表示されたのだ。私が投稿を消したとしてもデータがネット上から消滅することは決して無いが、すぐにそのリブログを消した。
コメントを読んだ時、不意に湿気を帯びた何かに触れられたような、何も無いところから視線を感じるような不気味さを感じた。虚構であるはずのものが、何かのきっかけで現実と接続され、こちら側に迫ってくる。私が安全であると思っていた場所は、向こうから見れば手の届く場所だったのだ。
