Like most creative teens in the 2010s, Mai Naito’s vehicle into the realm of photography was a groundbreaking, world-expanding piece of tech known as the iPhone. Armed with the nifty device, a 14-year-old Mai began taking snaps of everything around her. “As a child, I loved writing diaries, but at one point, I decided to take photographs instead, to preserve the emotions of those moments for the future,” she says. “I photographed everything that happened in my day. For example, a drink I had, or the interior of my room, or the outfit I was wearing.”
Mai, now in her mid-20s, eventually bought her first professional camera and experimented with loads of different subjects – people, interiors, cityscapes – before realising that she should focus on capturing the one thing…
