Ai Iwane | “A NEW RIVER”
Ai Iwane has been continuously photographing the cherry blossoms in Fukushima since 2012. The cherry trees in Fukushima attracted thousands of tourists every spring, but since the 311 earthquake-related nuclear power plant accident, it had always been only Iwane herself under the cherry blossoms in the radioactive evacuation zone.
In 2020, however, the new coronavirus pandemic created the same view across entire Japan. In April 2020, she was called for an assignment in Kitakami, Iwate prefecture (north of Fukushima). In Tenshochi park, Iwane encountered a two-kilometer (appx 1-1/4 miles) long tunnel of cherry blossoms in full bloom, with no one under them. This view inspired her to travel northward to see more cherry blossoms, and her secret journey began.
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Since 2006, Iwane has focused on the Japanese community’s culture in Hawaii, and she settled her second base in Miharu, Fukushima, in 2013. She continuously examined the relevance between Hawaii and Fukushima from the aspect of immigration and put her research into her earlier work “KIPUKA” in 2018, which earned widespread acclaim and won the renowned Prix Pictet Japan Award (2022) and the Kimura Ihei Photography Award (2019).
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Mayumi Suzuki | “HOJO”
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.
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Tamami Iinuma | “Piece of Colonne. Fragments of Waves”
Under the theme of “House of Architecture,” Tamami Iinuma photographs architecture as accumulations of people’s memories, and cities and landscapes as habitations of architecture. From 2008, Iinuma studied abroad at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig for a year and resided in Leipzig until 2013 (received the Grant for Overseas Study, Pola Art Foundation in 2010).
Her “Piece of Colonne. Fragments of Waves” series reflects her experiences and insight during her residency in Leiptich, and the colorful images compose a beautiful wave utilizing the pages of her concept photo book that serve as columns of architecture.
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“When I was living on Industry Street in Leipzig, Germany, around 2009-2010, I found a dusty memo block in a tobacco and stationery store in the corner of Elster Passage near my apartment.The memo block was in the shape of a spiral, with seven colors of paper (light yellow, light red, light blue, dark yellow, dark red, dark blue, and green), with one side glued and more glossy than the other three. Attracted by the decorative nature of this block, I piled them up to make a “colonne/column” and photographed them under natural light. Using a macro lens and focusing beyond infinity, I could fuse the density, light, and shadow of the colors. When I looked through the viewfinder, the colors surged through me like a wave, and felt as if I could capture them by releasing the shutter. These photographs that resembled colored paper were created in this way.”
—Tamami Iinuma
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Yoshiki Omote | “Turbulence”
Yoshiki Omote is an artist renowned for his works that convert large-scale schemes and phenomena into sizes of daily life.
In the “Turbulence” series, he represents atmospheric movements on a two-dimensional surface. A massive amount of resin is poured onto the surface of a mirror, with several ink drops added. He then leaves the work as is for a few days, allowing the liquid to move organically and blend into each other while it hardens, generating an unexpected composition over time.
The artwork consists of a mirror, ink, and reflection, and is a pure conversation of the phenomenon of light, which photography stands for.