I can still remember well a dream that I often had in
my teens. I called it my “backstreet dream” because it involved
walking on and on down a backstreet lined with
shops on both sides.

I knew right where it was, too. Running parallel
to the main road in F Town, where I lived, there was
another, slightly narrower road, and it was down this
road that I would disappear. The streetscape, however,
bore little resemblance to the one that I knew from walking
there now and then on my way home from school.
There were bustling, unfamiliar shops and a long section
lined with the walls surrounding grand residences, and it
seemed that if I kept walking on I would arrive at a river,
but I always woke up just as the bridge came into view.

I had this dream so many times that soon I was
able to recognize immediately—within the dream—
that I was once again back in that same neighborhood.
This lasted for a long time; I believe I continued to have
that dream until I was in my late twenties. Eventually I
forgot all about it but then, when I saw David Ohyama’s
Les Ruelles de Daegu [The Alleys of Daegu] series, it
brought back the feeling of my backstreet dream for the
first time in a long time. As I looked through the photographs
I was captivated by a sense of floating just above
the roadway, heading nowhere in particular, filled with a
mix of anxiety and excitement.

I once took a business trip to Daegu, Korea—where
Ohyama shot these photographs—but of course I never
stepped into any of the back alleys depicted here. And
yet, even though I am encountering these locations for
the first time through the photos, there is a sense of
nostalgia. They bring a feeling of conviction that I, too,
joined Ohyama in tracing these narrow alleys with their
subtle curves, turning corner after corner, walking on
and on.

My own pet theory is that a good photograph
conjures a sense of déjà-vu. Even though it depicts a
view you are seeing for the first time, or a person you
have never met, it still somehow leaves you feeling as
if you have experienced it before. Although taking a
photograph is an individual act by a photographer,
the view that is captured becomes part of an archive
of images shared by many. Perhaps it is the same with
dreams. Maybe everyone has a dream or two like my
backstreet dream that repeats again and again, always
returning to the same place. The Les Ruelles de Daegu
series seems to depict passageways between photographs
and dreams.

But what lies at the ends of these streets? This is
something, perhaps, that nobody, not even the photographer
himself, knows, although something tells me the
last image in the collection may offer a hint.

Kotaro Iizawa
Photography Critic

* English Translation: Hart Larrabee