After losing his sense of smell for six months after contracting an early strain of the coronavirus in early 2020, Yusuke Ide became acutely aware of his own senses and how they shape his perception of the world. Originally an editor, Ide picked up an old manual film camera later that year and began photographing his surroundings.

“Distance” captures moments from Ide’s everyday reality, chosen, framed, and recorded deliberately and with care. Perhaps influenced by his sudden loss of smell, Ide’s images – showing cultivated trees along a street, an almost empty parking lot, a man seen from behind as he watches a youth baseball game, a bridge viewed through a window, and a plant (its flower cropped out of the frame) in a glass of water – convey a sense of remoteness (the titular distance) from the world, as well as a fascination with, or the possibility of being fascinated by, everything that is part of it.

In his afterword, Ide describes the result of his process as follows: “What remained was merely the data: ‘this is how I chose to document the world.’” On the preceding page, Risaku Suzuki disagrees in his own short text: “The quiet straightforwardness of Mr. Ide’s photographs gestures toward a truth: the medium can yield images that exceed the photographer’s own intention.”