Rinko Kawauchi


Rinko Kawauchi HonFRPS is a Japanese photographer. "Her work is characterized by a serene, poetic style, depicting the ordinary moments in life."
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Life and work

Kawauchi became interested in photography while studying graphic design and photography at Seian University of Art and Design where she graduated in 1993. She first worked in commercial photography for an advertising agency for several years before embarking on a career as a fine art photographer. She has mentioned that she continues to work the advertising job. Her background and experience with design have influenced the edits and arrangements of photos in her series. Kawauchi often thinks about new ways to see her photographs, allowing her to continue to find new meaning and significance in her work. There is little known about her personal life and family, but through her photo book Cui Cui she portrays the memories of her family, which she has said to have been shooting for over a decade. The photos in said book capture all the ordinaries and emotions of life, ranging from the happiness of childbirth to the heartbreak of death.
At age 19, she began making prints of her first black-and-white photographs, and it wasn't until five years later that she started printing color photographs. After experimenting with different cameras, she decided to stay with the Rolleiflex 6 × 6, which she still uses.
In 2001, she published simultaneously her first three photo books: Utatane, Hanabi, and Hanako. In the following years she won prizes for two of the books in Japan. In 2004 Kawauchi published Aila; in 2010 Murmuration, and in 2011 Illuminance.
Kawauchi's art is rooted in Shinto, the ethnic religion of the people of Japan. According to Shinto, all things on earth have a spirit, hence no subject is too small or mundane for Kawauchi's work; she also photographs "small events glimpsed in passing," conveying a sense of the transient. Kawauchi sees her images as parts of series that allow the viewer to juxtapose images in the imagination, thereby making the photograph a work of art and allowing a whole to emerge at the end. She likes working in photo books because they allow the viewer to engage intimately with her images. Her photographs are mostly in 6 × 6 format. However, upon being invited to the Brighton Photo Biennial in 2010, Kawauchi first photographed digitally and began taking photos that were not square.
Kawauchi also composes haiku poems.
She lived for many years in Tokyo and in 2018 moved to the countryside on the outskirts of the city.

Style

Since she began her photographic career, Kawauchi's photographs contained a unique aesthetic and mood, capturing intimate, poetic, and beautiful moments of the world around her. They often have brilliant and radiant light that give them a dream-like quality. The sublimity of her photographs are further enhanced by her use of soft colors as well as her awareness for the beauty in even the most average moments.
There is not one specific theme or concept that Kawauchi chooses to explore with her image creation; rather, she does it spontaneously, observing and reacting to everything that is around her before doing any sort of editing. She focuses on just shooting, photographing everything that attracts her eyes before looking back and thinking about why she was interested in those subjects. Another subject that she explored in her book, Ametsuchi, was the practice of religious ceremonies and rituals that hinted at an earthly cycle involving the concepts of time and impermanence. In the book, she depicts Japan's Mount Aso, a sacred site for a Shinto ritual called yakihata, and its volcanic landscape. The ritual is a long-standing tradition dating back about 1,300 years in which farmland is burned yearly to maintain its sustainability for new crops as opposed to using chemicals, and the communities at Aso are among the few that continue this tradition. Ironically, after witnessing essentially the rebirth of farmland take place, Kawauchi claims that she burned away her old self and was reborn herself.
In her book Halo, she continues to explore that theme with different rituals at other locations. She traveled to Izumo, Japan to witness a ritual that involves the lighting of sacred flames to welcome the gods. She also went to the Hebei province of China to see new year celebrations, including a 500 year old tradition of throwing molten iron at the city walls to make their own fireworks.

Awards

Publications

Photo books

Utatane. Tokyo: Ritoru Moa, 2001...Hanabi. Tokyo: Little More, 2001. .Hanako. Tokyo: Little More, 2001. ISBN 4-89815-054-3.blue. Tokyo: Petit Grand 2003. .Aila. Tokyo: Little More, 2004. .
  • * New edition: Tokyo: Foil, 2015. the eyes, the ears, "Photographs and Words". Tokyo: Foil, 2005. .Cui Cui. Tokyo: Foil, and Paris: Actes Sud/Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, 2005.. Photographic memories of her family.Rinko Diary. Tokyo: Foil, 2006. .Rinko Diary II. Tokyo: Foil, 2006. .Majun Tokyo: Foil, 2007. . Set of 10 postcards with photographs of Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium.Semear. Tokyo: Foil, and São Paulo: Museu de Arte Moderna, 2007. . Photographs taken on three trips to Brazil, invited by the museum.Murmuration. Brighton: Photoworks, 2010.. Edition of 1000 copies. First digital photographs of Brighton Pier for the Photo Biennial.One Day – 10 Photographers. Heidelberg/Berlin: Kehrer, 2010., edited by Harvey Benge.Snowflake Twelfth.. Zine's Mate, 2011.Illuminance. Text by David Chandler, bibliography. New York: Aperture, 2011..
  • * The Tenth Anniversary Edition, expanded edition with additional texts by Masatake Shinohara and Lesley A. Martin. New York: Aperture, and London: Thames & Hudson, 2021.. Light and Shadow. Tokyo: Rinko Kawauchi Office, 2012. Pictures taken in Tōhoku region after Fukushima disaster, proceeds went to relief funds.
  • * New edition: Kanagawa: Super Labo, 2014., edition of 1000 copies.Approaching Whiteness. Tokyo: Goliga, 2013. Printed scroll in 9 variations of 10 to 12 images each, total combined edition of 300.Illuminance, Ametsuchi, Seeing Shadows. Text by Leiko Ikemura. Kyoto: Seigen-sha, 2012. .Ametsuchi. Text by Kawauchi. New York: Aperture, 2013.. Sheets. Berlin: Kominek, 2013..
  • with Leiko Ikemura. kirakira. Shizuoka: Nohara, 2014. ISBN 978-4-904257-25-8.
  • with Terri Weifenbach. Gift, two books in slipcase. Tokyo: Amana, 2014..The river embraced me. Tokyo: Torch Press, 2016..Halo. New York: Aperture, 2017..
  • with Seung Woo Back. Composition No. 1. Japan: Iann, 2017. ISBN 979-11-85374-16-1. Mobile phone photographs by both and conversations recorded for about 100 days.Hajimari no hi. Japan: Kyuryudo, 2018. . Words and pictures in the format of a children's picture-book.When I was seven. Tokyo: HeHe, 2019.. For French fashion brand agnès b.As It Is. Marseille, France: Chose Commune, 2020. . Sonnafuu. Photographs and texts. Japan: Nanarokusha, 2020. ISBN 978-4-904292-98-3.Early Works 1997, mini portfolio with 6 color collotype prints. Japan: Benrido, 2021.Des Oiseaux. Text by ornithologist Guilhem Lesaffre. Paris: Éditions Xavier Barral, 2021.. M/E – On this sphere / Endlessly interlinking. Exhibition catalogue, texts by Masatake Shinohara, Hana Takigami and Yasuhiro Arai. Tokyo: Asahi Shimbun, 2022.Yamanami. Japan: Shinyodo, 2022. ISBN 978-4-910387-02-4.
  • with Shuntarō Tanikawa. Here and Now. Tokyo: Torch Press, 2023. ISBN 978-4-907562-43-4. Poem by Tanikawa originally for music by Ikuko Harada.

Video works

  • 2012: Seeing Shadow
  • 2012: Ametsuchi
  • 2012: Haruarashi
  • 2015: Illuminance
  • 2017: ''Halo''

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Collections

Kawauchi's work is held in the following collections: