What We See and What We Tell was an exhibition and workshop/lectures in Hachinohe Book Center and Hachinohe Art Museum to celebrate the publication Someone is always watching. 

Someone is always watching is a book by Kumi Hiroi and Anneke Hymmen in collaboration with a writer Akiko Otake, commissioned by Akishobo, a Tokyo-based publisher. The book is a collaboration between photography and text. It consists of 15 short stories written by Otake, inspired by 15 portraits taken by Hiroi and Hymmen. Otake writes the stories of the photographs as if she were speaking to them, interweaving the viewpoints of the creators of photographs and the viewpoint of the viewer.

For the exhibition, Otake wrote a new short fiction story about one of the stories included in the book Someone is always watching, but from a different angle. And Hiroi and Hymmen took new eight still photographs to accompany the story. The first half of the story and photographs were exhibited at the Hachinohe Art Museum, while the second half were presented at the Hachinohe Book Centre. Alongside the exhibition, workshops and lectures were held to discuss what people see and don't see from the photographs and how this differs from person to person.