Shinryo Saeki's long-awaited new book, after Aisatsu (2009), which drew wide attention for its personal view of life and death, the other shore and this shore, and for the humour of chance. Riverside gathers the work made since then, almost in chronological order, and accepts the changes that come with the flow of time, with a gaze on the light that falls between life and death. Even the closest bond, the family, is met by bereavement, while new life is born alongside: the birth and growth of a child, the loss of parents. What Saeki cuts out of these ordinary cycles are strange, inviolable moments where what arises and what passes away cross: small insects, the glow of a liquid-crystal screen, scaly clouds. The photographer says family was not the theme; he pointed the camera at what caught his attention and it turned into pictures of family. In an essay on the obi, Akiko Otake writes of light and shadow knotted together, and of chance events that turn into grace.