_valerian

The tricky thing about photographing Mika is that she is so savy with the medium herself. She knows how to work a good photo even when she is not the one with the camera. If you want to see some more photos by her and of her, go here (日本語). Also, I just found an interview with her and Yuki Watanabe online here (日本語).
On the site above Mika’s statement towards photographing her friend Yuki is as follows:

I think longing and envy is what motivated me to first photograph her.
And I remember that before we were friends I mostly photographed her on the sly. But at that time affection and the desire of possess mingles when the distance between us accidentally diminished. Over four years - a long-time yet short all the same - we changed more than a little and so naturally the way we took pictures of each other changed too. Were I a painter I don’t think I would paint her, and if I were a sculptor I don’t think I would sculpt her. Always looking at her from the same distance, I learned both the joy and hardship of continuously photographing the same person. I now realize that this feeling is something only photography can capture. And so with affection I will gaze upon her with these mingled feelings of affection and jealousy, of superiority, inferiority, and love. And I will capture them all in a single photograph. I think that everything is okay.

It’s difficult to come up with a bettter reason for photographing another person, and Mika’s own understanding of what photography (both the act and end result) can do is what makes taking her photograph so exciting and frightening at the same time.

Finally, these are just 700px wide images on a website. The actual fiber based prints are so much better than a monitor can ever show. It is almost a shame to shoot medium format and then have to reduce the photographs to fit on the internet.