“The passing days and months are eternal travelers in time. The years that come and go are travelers too. Life itself is a journey, and as for those who spend their days upon the waters in ships and those who grow old leading horses, their very home is the open road.”

The poet Matsuo Basho (1644–94) began The Narrow Road to the Deep North (1702) with these words, and as a young boy growing up in Japan I learned them by heart, along with several of his haikus. But it was only recently that I came to fully appreciate the sentiment, perhaps because my personal life is so deeply integrated with my photographic life, as Basho alludes to above. And I don’t just read his book sitting in my room, but experience his words more profoundly through my own journey.