Otouto (Younger brother) © Yurie Nagashima

The series Touching a Book was originally created in response to Yurie Nagashima’s conversations with Kozue Handa, a blind woman who is a distinguished educator in art practice for the visually impaired. Inspired to create a dedicated work for Handa, Nagashima made an installation that included a series of photographs of fingers reading braille. The book being read in the photographs is a braille rendition of Senaka no Kioku (Memories of Her Back), a collection of autobiographical essays for which Nagashima received the Kodansha Essay Award in 2016. Touching the braille dots in the photographs are the hands of Nagashima’s family members, who are featured in the book. Through this series, Nagashima distinguishes her visual work from her literary work based on the premise that it is a mistake to expect a coherent experience of distinct sensory experiences, in this case viewing and reading. While Nagashima acknowledges the shared thematic roots of her photography and her writing, she considers them two autonomous modes of expression and rejects the idea that they may somehow complement one another.