Mayumi Suzuki was born in Onagawa, Miyagi Prefecture, to a photography studio that has been in operation for generations. Being deeply connected to photography from childhood, the narratives spun by her photographs have allowed viewers to find liberation through expression. Her debut series, “The Restoration Will,” was an intimate body of work where the artist calmly accepted the incidents that had happened to her and her family in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake, and gently, yet straightly, raised her head and looked forward. Her following series, “HOJO,” meaning “fertility” in English, is also based on her own experiences.
The starting point of “HOJO” was Suzuki’s encounter with unsold vegetables, such as a two-legged carrot she found on her way home from fertility treatment (IVF) that she had given up on. The work shows the chain of life by confronting the subject for approximately 60 seconds for a long exposure, a very short time for an internal examination, yet a carefully experienced time for photography.
A female nude, a deformed vegetable, and a fertilized egg, all of which appear to be independent subjects at first glance, are treated equally and inevitably in this work, and we are reminded that they are all the same as forms of life. The work also evokes a kind of freshness that does not resist things that transcend human knowledge.