Martin Parr

Rinko Kawauchi

Murmuration presents a new Photoworks commission by acclaimed Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi for the Brighton Photo Biennial 2010, New Documents, curated by Martin Parr. Invited to make new work about Brighton, Kawauchi was immediately drawn to the spectacle of flocking starlings at Brighton Pier. Here during the winter months at dusk, the birds gather in tens of thousands, wheeling around to create a mesmerizing cloud called a 'murmuration'. Kawauchi is fascinated by the ephemeral nature of this phenomenon and, continuing with the theme of the flock, she has also trailed groups of people through the city. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Strange and Familiar: Three Views of Brighton at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, 2 October – 14 November 2010. Limited edition.

Murmuration

David Chandler

Illuminance - Rinko Kawauchi

In 2001, Rinko Kawauchi launched her career with the simultaneous publication of three astonishing photobooksUtatane, Hanabi, and Hanakofirmly establishing her as one of the most innovative newcomers to contemporary photography, not just in Japan, but across the globe. In the years that followed, she published other notable monographs, including Aila (2004), The Eyes, the Ears (2005), and Semear (2007). And now, ten years after her precipitous entry onto the international stage, Aperture is delighted to publish Illuminance, the latest volume of Kawauchis work and the first to be published outside of Japan. Kawauchis work has frequently been lauded for its nuanced palette and offhand compositional mastery, as well as her 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 This impressive compilation of previously unpublished images is proof of Kawauchis unparalleled, unique sensibility and her on-going appeal to the lovers of photography.

Illuminance

With every new publication, acclaimed Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi (born 1972) reimagines the terms of both her own work and the photo book as a form, while retaining her special capacity to depict the world with a palpable delight and awe. "Sheets" continues this adventurous trajectory. It consists of contact sheets from a variety of Kawauchi's previous projects, re-edited here as a cinematic narrative or scrapbook, with gatefolds interspersed throughout to punctuate the strongly rhythmic character created by the contact sheets' black frames. At once emphatically ordinary and lusciously transcendent, these color images of veiny palm fronds and water droplets on lotus leaves, waterfalls, birds, butterflies, open skies, domestic activities, bleached-out beach scenes and street lamps aglow at night celebrate ephemeral luminosity and everyday epiphanies. Sequenced by Kawauchi and publisher/editor Misha Kominek, and designed by Kominek and Claudia Ott, this hardcover volume opens up a new dimension on Kawauchi's much-admired oeuvre.

Sheets

Rinko Kawauchi has gained international recognition for her nuanced, lushly colored images that offer closely observed fragments of everyday life. In her latest work, she shifts her attention from the micro to the macro. The title, Ametsuchi, is comprised of two Japanese characters meaning heaven and earth, and is taken from the title of one of the oldest pangrams in Japanesea chant in which each character of the Japanese syllabary is used. Translated loosely as Song of the Universe, it offers a list that includes the heavens, earth, stars, and mountains. In Ametsuchi, Kawauchi brings together images of distant constellations and tiny figures lost within landscapes, as well as photographs of a traditional style of controlled-burn farming (yakihata) in which the cycles of cultivation and recovery span decades and generations. Punctuating the series are images of Buddhist rituals and other religious ceremoniesa suggestion of other means by which humankind has traditionally attempted to transcend time and memory. The series is her first to be fully realized with a medium-format, 4 x 5 camera, instead of the 2 ¼-inch format for which she has become best known. And while her work has frequently touched on the ephemeral, often using tiny details as a point of access to the larger cycles of life, with this new body of work she purposely concentrates on the elemental and universal.

Ametsuchi

In Halo, the popular and influential photo-artist Rinko Kawauchi combines imaginative photographs of coastal Japan, the birds along the coast of Brighton, England, and images from New Year celebrations in Hebei province, China, in which blacksmiths hurl molten iron in lieu of fireworks. Halo provides a mesmerizing photographic meditation on the cycles of time, nature, and ritual.

Rinko Kawauchi

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