A Place to Disappear

Yana Van Ginneken’s (b. 1998, Belgian) first book, A Place to Disappear, explores the quiet moments of disappearance that unfold among passengers traveling across Japan’s seas.

The series began in 2024, when Van Ginneken boarded a ferry crossing the Inland Sea. She became fascinated by the way passengers gradually withdrew into themselves as the journey unfolded. Settling into their chosen places, they remained physically present while drifting increasingly into an inner world—gazing out to sea, closing their eyes, falling asleep.

For Van Ginneken, the ferry became a threshold between konoyo (この世), “this world,” and anoyo (あの世), “that world” or the other shore. Her understanding of this passage was shaped in part by Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore.

The crossing is a horizontal movement: a passage across the sea, from one shore to another. At the same time, another movement takes place vertically. Through immersion in water, the body seems to descend inward, while the soul is imagined to rise.

The photographs made on land appear as fragments of memories or dreams carried ashore by the traveling passengers: children chasing a dinosaur, an empty school field, stones counted in the mind to induce sleep, or a dragon entering a police station.

As the passengers become absorbed in their own inner worlds, Van Ginneken seeks to become almost invisible herself—to dissolve into observation and into the world around her.