Tracing Memories of Cio-Cio-San

When Viktoria Sorochinski first heard Puccini’s opera, Madame Butterfly, and read John Luther Long’s short story, she was deeply touched by Cio-Cio-San’s fate. Her work did not aim to illustrate the tale, but to convey the sensitivity and spirit of the story.

LFI: You produced your project in three cities – Bregenz, Berlin, Tokyo. What did you want to convey in your series?
Viktoria Sorochinski: Since this project was commissioned by the Bregenz Festspiele and Leica Camera Austria, I had to follow certain guidelines, so that my work would be connected to the Madama Butterfly opera. Therefore, I wanted to come up with a minimalist approach and a soft colour palette, to evoke the dreamlike felling and to capture the spirit of Japanese culture. In this series I use landscapes as metaphorical and poetic elements, that reflect the emotional and the inner states of mind of Cio-Cio-San. The very special, almost magical atmosphere of Bregenz inspired me greatly. Surprisingly the most dramatic images with the Sakura blossoms were shot in Berlin, where a wonderful performance artist and choreographer Tiziana Longo posed as Cio-Cio-San for me. And lastly, I was very lucky during that period to go to Japan for my solo exhibition dedicated to Ukraine, and was able to photograph a beautiful and traditional Japanese home, and the family that lived there. Overall, photographing in these three different locations made sense to me, because it allowed me to bring together and merge different cultures, and therefore give my interpretation a more universal feeling.

To what extent do your photographs capture staged compositions or spontaneous situations?
This project is different from my other work, because it’s based on an existing narrative. I simply followed my inner feeling and I didn’t have a predetermined vision of the exact images that should be included. I wandered around in different locations, just looking for inspiring places and moments. Since most of the project consists of landscapes or abstract images and still lifes, I would say that the staging part was rather minimal, key moments in the narrative, such as Cio-Cio-San getting married, or where she is waiting for Pinkerton to come back and she has his child, or her death… But apart from those, it is mostly based on conveying the emotional states of mind that Cio-Cio-San was going through. By the way, in my interpretation, I didn’t want to make the ending as tragic as it is in the original narrative, so in my version Cio-Cio-San transforms into a swan, leaving behind her pain and sorrow – the image titled Transformation.

You used the Leica Q2: what predestined it for the series?
In the last 3-4 years I’ve shot my projects exclusively with the Leica Q2. I fell in love with this camera because it allows me to work in a more intuitive and spontaneous way, due to its very compact size and very convenient and simple interface. It is great with landscapes, as well as still lifes or portraits, especially considering that I like to shoot environmental portraits, where a wide angled lens (in this case 28mm) comes in very useful. This camera handles well at slow shutter speeds, which I often use because I mostly use available light; and, of course, the final quality is amazing due to the very large 47 mega pixel sensor, which allows me to make very large prints if necessary. I also love the colour rendering and the overall feeling of the images that come out of this camera, because they seem to be very close to an analogue aesthetic.