Craig Mod Looks Back at a Decade of Meditative Walking

The Kii Peninsula and Connecticut are thousands of miles apart. Despite this, while embarking on a 30-day walk in 2021, Craig Mod recognised something of his homeland in this central region of Japan.

The American photographer and author is known for having combined his two passions, walking and photography, with great sensitivity. He spent over a decade on the peninsula’s pilgrimage routes, the most famous of which is the Kumano Kodo. These walks gave rise to two annotated books of photographs, Koya Bound (2016) and Kissa by Kissa (2020).

Grace in the face of difficulties

When he embarked on a long walk in 2021, Craig Mod wanted to create a book about all his years spent exploring the sacred routes in the centre of the country. The photographer walked alone, as he often does, free from the distraction regularly posed by social media. Thus, his mind began to wander and trace the thread of his existence, while his acuity led him to absorb the details of the surrounding landscape. He realised that the economy there was not flourishing and that it was a deprived area, much like the place where he grew up.

The Kii peninsula has an ageing population and is suffering from the relocation of some of its industries, such as fishing and timber, to China. However, this delicate economic situation has not given rise to violence or drug problems, unlike what has happened in some regions of the United States.

‘There was a difference in energy between those two places’, the photographer explains in an interview with Pen. ‘The word I kept coming back to was ‘grace’. Even in economically depressed places in Japan […] Everyone you meet still has a certain grace about them. They’re still taken care of by social insurance. […] It was fascinating to not see people suffering the way people suffered in my childhood.’

Bearing witness to the fullness of life

This realisation occurred when Craig Mod entered his forties. He became aware that he had managed to get out because he had an easy time at school while other individuals, like Bryan, his childhood best friend, did not. Craig Mod was able to continue his studies at university. At that same time, Bryan was murdered. This traumatised the photographer, and he was marked by survivor’s guilt. It was undoubtedly one of the reasons why he decided to get as far away as possible and settle in Japan, where he has been living for around twenty years now.

Craig Mod created Things Become Other Things in homage to Bryan. ‘A lot of the walking is a duty to bear witness to the fullness of life. It’s about transmuting that sense of guilt into something positive, additive, and multiplying it in a positive way. Bearing witness to all these people, the landscape and this beauty, and doing it in honour of Bryan has been driving me. It’s about bearing witness to villages that degrade well, considering how we learn from them shutting down in a graceful way.’

A testimony of the passage of time, Things Become Other Things takes its name from an interesting anecdote. When staying with a couple of retirees in a B&B along his route, Craig Mod thought he had met their daughter. The day he left, the husband revealed that she was actually just a young woman who had shown up at their home one day and who they had allowed to stay in exchange for doing chores around the house. She had become like their daughter, because ‘time passes and things become other things’.

As for his previous work, Craig Mod decided to self-publish Things Become Other Things in Japan and have it printed and bound by hand. The rights to the book have also been purchased by Random House, who will publish a modified version of it for general public release in black and white, in spring 2025. This marks a new departure for the author, who hopes to continue this series of books on walking.

Things Become Other Things (2023), a book of photographs by Craig Mod, available on his website.