Here is another series that I really like by Rinko Kawauchi. All of her images have a very similer atmosphere that goes with her idea and concept of the world. Her style is very spiritual and pure. This puplication by Rinko was done in 2005. This is how she describes the series in her own words, “A chick, horse, dog, turtle and human beings…Some creatures are to die soon after the birth; some creatures are born only to be eaten by the others to sustain their lives. All the living creatures are accepting their fate in the life no matter what it is. The mysterious and precious moments of the birth of various creatures. The blessings of being living. The babbles, vividness, beauty, joy, and the ephemeral existence of the lives in nature.” Within the series she is interpreting every day situations through the images that she creates.
I love the pure, softness that Rinko has created through her use of editing. She has managed to collect a wide variation of themes, frames and subjects within this series. She has captures portraits, landscapes, abstract images and lot of images of nature. Every images within the series tells its won story and has its own unique theme. When she combines all the images into a series they all have this flow because of the style she has created.
The series Iluminance was done in 2011. Kawauchi’s work has frequently been lauded for its nuanced palette and offhand compositional mastery, as well as its ability to incite wonder via careful attention to tiny gestures and the incidental details of her everyday environment. In Illuminance, Kawauchi continues her exploration of the extraordinary in the mundane, drawn to the fundamental cycles of life and the seemingly inadvertent, fractal-like organization of the natural world into formal patterns.
This series by Rinko is about memories and finding them again. Her use of pastel and soft colours is what drew me to her work. I lover style and unique perspectives that she has.
Her exhibition unifies the stories of people’s memories with works of photography — featuring her brand new works shot across forty different locations, all inspired by memories of the people of Kumamoto. By capturing the backdrops of these recollections, the experience brings life to memory within the photographer, and as such allows the viewer to feel the budding of memories of their own. Within time, flowing like a river, we find our memories embracing all of us. Through the scenes and places captured within these photographs, one finds this photo collection to be overflowing with refreshing moments — ones that open the doors to our own memory. Through opening a new frontier through Aso in Kumamoto as the backdrop of Kawauchi’s previous work “Ametsuchi,” we find her continuing her foresighted expression of what it means to feel “alive in the moment” throughout this newest work.
Rinko Kawauchi is a Japanese photographer born in 1972. Her work is characterized by a serene, poetic style, depicting the ordinary moments in life. She studied at Seian College of Art and Design and graduated in 1993. She worked in advertising for several years after graduationg, but later became a fine art photographer. In 2001 three of her photo books were published. They were Hanako (a japanese girl’s name), Utatane (catnap), and Hanabi (fireworks). Kawauchi’s images are rooted in Shinto, the ethnic religion of the people of Japan. According to Shinto, all things on earth have a spirit, this shows in her work because no subject is too small or mundane for her. Most of her images are in a 6×6 format.
I came across this photographer after doing my manipulation edits task. Her work is quite similar and in the same style as Laura El Tanawy. Both their work contains a bleach, bright atmosphere that I love. Her images are extremely pure and have this innocent sense to them. She is aiming to capture the world as she sees it, with a spirit in everything and everyone. Although all of her images are quite dis-similar they all contain a beauty that link to each other in someway.
Within her many series she chooses to fragment certain scenes. She sees the beauty in everyday life and captures it. Her images range from landscapes to portraits to abstract scenes. She pinpoints the beauty that she sees and displays it, closely observing it.
Within her work, she doesn’t have a set theme like most photographers who choose to focus on one thing, such as a memory, or a a certain object. Kawauchi uses the world as her subject. She fragments the beauty of every day situations and uses her photographing style to manipulate them. Kawauchi is breaking the rules of photography like the photographer Laura El Tanawy. She fragments the scene rather than framing the whole thing. This is what makes her images so unique and interesting. They all tell their own specific story. I also love the colour and aesthetic of her images.
Provoke was a Japanese magazine which rejected glossy commercial imagery and the style of documentary photography. The Provoke era refers to its influence on photography made in post-war Japan. Provoke was initially set up to challenge the idea that photography has its own language, independent of words. Following the decimation and rebuilding of Japanese society after the Second World War, photography played an important part in a new self-definition of Japanese visual style, set apart from Western influences.
Provoke was a magazine with only three issues in the late 1960s, but its influence continued into the 1970s and 80s. It set itself apart from the photojournalistic style of the day, looking for a more subjective voice and validation of the person behind the camera. The images are often grainy and disorderly, reflecting the social and political upheavals taking place across the nation. The magazines main purpose was to contrast with the glossy imagery of commercial magazines which were around at the time. Takuma Nakahira and Yutaka Takanashi were founding members of the Provoke group. Daido Moriyama joined a little later, bringing with him his early influences of Cartier-Bresson, but with a desire to be a witness with more self-expressive intent.
This youtube clip details how the Provoke magazines was set up and then the ways in which it began to be used by the three photographers listed above to change the practical and theoretical meaning of photography. Provokes main focus comes from the name, the photographers aimed to provoke people with their imagery and even more so provoke visual language. The background is crucial to understanding the emergenece of breaking the boundaries of documentary photography.
Provoke was founded during the moments of massive changes in Japanese society around the 1960’s. One of the most notable for triggering this emergence was the ratification of the US-Japan security treaty which lead to companies in japan acting in an neoliberal way which had never been seen before in Japan. Protests from workers in factories are even more so farmers began to protest and millions of Japanese citizens took to the street campaigning and protesting against the government. This is when protest photography became huge being accompanied by about 80 protest ooks which were filled with images of the mass amount of participations that these protests had. The images and books spread visual information and was used to mobilize new protests by provoking them to join. The photographers documented the performances of these events and the images became dynamic and ephemeral which are the exact elements which ‘Provoke’ as a magazine adopted in their photography.
All three of the photographers which founded provoke magazine began to show a new conceptual approach to photography were the outcome was unpredictable as they shot the photos without looking through the viewfinder and instead ‘ shot from the hip’ creating spontaneous imagery. The artists were questioning established documentary photography and experimenting with breaking the boundaries of what were thought to be the rules of photography. Their images were judged as being rough, grainy and blurred which contrasted with what classic photographers labeled documentary photography should be. Nonetheless there were always shown differences between the three photographers as Yutaka Takanashi who was the most classical amongst the three photographers did not seem to push the boundaries as much as the others, still using the viewfinder when making his images. ‘Provoke’ seems to be an examination of photographers possibilities and lead the way for other photographers to push the boundaries of photography.
“Today, when words have lost their material base—in other words, their reality—and seem suspended in mid-air, a photographer’s eye can capture fragments of reality that cannot be expressed in language as it is. He can submit those images as a document to be considered alongside language and ideology. This is why, brash as it may seem, Provoke has the subtitle, ‘provocative documents for thought.”
— Manifesto of the Provoke Group by Kohi Taki, Takuma Nakahira, Takahiko Okada, Yutaka Takanashi, and Daido Moriyama – http://www.photopedagogy.com/provoke.html
Photography was too explanatory, too narrational for me. […] It was natural for me to join Provoke. […] They said they were photographing atmosphere. But I was very precise and careful. […] But my work changed after I saw how they worked. I saw that I could not control everything. I understood that photography is only a fragment. I used to be a photographer who interprets things via language. And then Provoke changed me.
— Yakuta Takanashi
Furthermore i watched this video by Daido Moriyama where he reflects on the rebellious youth culture of late 1960s Japan, a period when he and his colleagues were working on the avant-garde photography magazine Provoke. He discusses his attempt to deconstruct the medium in his series Shashin yo sayonara (Farewell Photography) (1972), though it ultimately deconstructed him. Daido Moriyama was on of may of the young photographers who were involved in the provoke magazine and in the short video he suggests that young people i this time had the motivation to express themselves and that they were inspired by the feelings of rebellion to produce radical photography which allowed them to express themselves. When Provoke came to an end, Moriyama ould not settle with taken normal photography an this is were he continued his social rebellion through photography and produced his photobook ‘Farewell Photography’ where he questioned every little thing about photography as he was “excessively caught up in a desire to deconstruct photogrpahy”.
When looking at photographers such as Daido Moriyama, Takuma Nakihara and Yutaka Takanashi words such as radical, expression, unpredictable, spontaneous, grainy, blurred, unique, individual, protest and rebellious come to mind. These Japanese photographers which used social rebellion as inspiration and motivation for their photography capture extremely unique images which break the traditional boundaries of photography, but i think that there is a need for photographers who want to get there message across to break the rules and produce pieces which are different and radical as this catches the eye of the audience, the viewer, the political protests. To me, to provoke means to initiate question and debate of the meaning of something. And that is exactly what the provoke photographers where doing, they were questioning the boundaries of photography and therefore making others also question it. I think that once a subject is brought into the eyes of individuals as being question by one it has the domino effect to provoke offers the also question this and what the Japanese provoke photographers have caused is a longitudinal debate of the possibilities of photographers.
