Westbound, Then Skyward — Memoirs from the American West, 1990–1992 —

The American West, seen through Japanese eyes—distance, silence, and the shape of freedom.

Meteor Crater, Arizona — Aerial view from a Cessna aircraft.
Meteor Crater, AZ, USA — Apr 1992 · Velvia50

Westbound, Then Skyward

— Memoirs from the American West, 1990–1992 —

In 1990, I drove west — and then I took to the sky.

With a map in hand, I followed the road,
until the moment came to take the controls myself.

What I saw, between earth and sky,
was a record of a time and its culture.

Discovering America

America, As I Saw It

Essay

Things I Noticed

Road Trip 1990–1992

On the Road, 1990–1992

Flight Log 1990–1992

In the Air, 1990–1992

– About –
1990–1992

In the early 1990s, I traveled the American West with a map in hand
—first on the ground, and eventually from the sky.

As a Japanese observer, what I encountered was not just landscape,
but a different scale of space, freedom, and silence.

Reworking film from those days—Velvia—alongside memory,
this project revisits those distances from both image and words.

More than thirty years later, the journey continues.