Sahara Horizon , Sahara

Beneath a glittering canopy of stars, I slipped out of my tent and climbed a rocky ridge. About ten minutes after setting up my camera on a tripod, the eastern horizon began to faintly glow—the first sign of dawn. As time passed, the sands and rocky expanses, tinged with the light of daybreak, slowly rose out of the darkness, their contours gradually revealing themselves. There was no sound, nor the slightest hint of life. It was a scene so immense and overwhelming that it could only be described as a world of minerals.

It was December 1993. I was standing in the remotest reaches of the Sahara Desert, in an uninhabited region known as the Tassili–Ahaggar, straddling the border between Algeria and Niger. This area is among the most extremely arid in all the Sahara.

I first set foot in the Sahara in 1972, a year after beginning my career as a freelance photographer. In those early days, I earned my living shooting commercial subjects—studio models, entertainers, and various products.

My encounter with the Sahara, which led me to shift toward documentary photography, began during a ski tour in the European Alps with friends. After the tour ended and we parted ways in Paris, one of those friends and I decided to buy a beat-up car and set off on a carefree journey toward Spain. As we studied a map, I was struck anew by the fact that North Africa lay just south of Spain, and that its vast interior was occupied by the Sahara Desert. The Strait of Gibraltar, separating Europe and Africa, could be crossed by ferry in just an hour and a half.

Once across, we discovered that paved roads stretched deep into the heart of the Sahara. Ever since being captivated by the desert in Lawrence of Arabia, I had harbored a powerful longing to stand upon the horizon itself. Our destination was decided without hesitation: the Sahara.

We traveled south through eastern Morocco and entered Algeria. With every mile, the dryness intensified, and I was overwhelmed by the vast scale of the exposed land and the deep blue of the sky. On the second day after entering Algeria, we found ourselves standing in the midst of an unimaginable sea of sand. The wind-driven grains were a tawny, ultimate fineness; when scooped up by hand, they were as beautiful as gold dust.

Sand, rock, and the stars of the sky. Lush oases appearing suddenly in the blank expanse of the horizon. And the resilient lives of people bound, as if captive, to the sand. Thus began my enduring journeys to the Sahara, drawn into this otherworldly realm from the following year onward.

About thirty minutes after the first signs of dawn, the sun rose over the open horizon of Tassili–Ahaggar. In the crystal-clear air, the first rays of light moved slowly across the barren land, reminiscent of the surface of the moon. At the very edge of the Earth, I savored the profound joy of watching, alone, this solemn spectacle of light—an original scene of creation itself.

—Reprinted from the Kochi Shimbun serialized article “To a Land Beyond Dimensions”—