Internationally-known photographer Ishiuchi Miyako, who captures in film the memories and time that dwell in inanimate objects, chose to collaborate with the young photographer Yuhki Touyama for this exhibition. The works of these two artists overlap in a single exhibition space under the theme “the death of a women close to me.”
Ishiuchi’s Mother’s, a series of photographs of the belongings of her mother, who died in 2002, has been shown around the world. Although the work deals with a personal theme, its repeated exhibition has brought it before the eyes of many people, transforming its motif from “my mother,” to (anyone’s) “mother,” and finally to “woman.”
Yuhki Touyama exhibits photographs she took while caring for her grandmother, who passed away two years ago during the coronavirus pandemic, along with photographs of family members from her 2008 series Line 13. Neither her grandmother nor her mother, who died suddenly last year, appear in the latter photographs, so Touyama decided to photograph herself in her grandmother’s place, in order to feel close to her.
Ishiuchi and Touyama use photography to communicate with loved ones who have passed away. Touyama says that showing her work in the same exhibition space with Ishiuchi’s Mother’s has allowed her to connect with her own mother in a new way. Through the exhibition, the “individuals” depicted in the pictures are liberated from their roles as photographic subjects. They acquire universality, crossing the boundary line into the realm of society.
Ishiuchi Miyako has been creating photographic history for a long time. Her artistic dialogue with Yuhki Touyama, a photographer from another generation, is sure to write a new page in the history of photography.
This exhibition, a dialogue between two female photographers of different generations, is supported by WOMEN IN MOTION, a Kering program that shines a light on the talent of women in the fields of arts and culture. Since 2015, WOMEN IN MOTION has been a platform of choice for helping to change mindsets and reflect on women’s place and recognition across artistic fields.
Ishiuchi Miyako was born in Gunma Prefecture and grew up in the city of Yokosuka in Kanagawa Prefecture. In 1979, she won the 4th Kimura Ihei Award for her work Apartment. In 2005, she represented Japan at the Venice Biennale with her series Mother, for which she photographed items inherited from her late Mother's. In 2007, she began her internationally-renowned series ひろしま／hiroshima, for which she photographs belongings of atom bomb victims (hibakusha). In 2013, she received the Japanese Medal of Honor with purple ribbon, and in 2014 the Hasselblad Award (known as the ‘Nobel prize for photography’).
Recent exhibitions include the solo shows Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2015), Grain and Image (Yokohama Museum of Art, 2017), Ishiuchi Miyako (Each Modern, Taiwan, 2022), Ishiuchi Miyako (Stills, Edinburgh, UK, 2022), and group show Roppongi Crossing (Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2022). Her photobook Frida: Love and Pain (Iwanami Shoten) was published in 2016. Ishiuchi’s works are part of the permanent collections of Tokyo’s National Museum of Modern Art, the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, the Yokohama Museum of Art, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Tate Modern.
