Since the 1970s, Japanese photography has become the subject of major books and international exhibitions, but recognition has primarily centred on male photographers such as SUJIMOTO Hiroshi, MORIYAMA Daidō and ARAKI Nobuyoshi.
- Introduction to I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now, Aperture, 2024
Until recently, the work of women photographers in Japan had been overlooked or, in some cases, dismissed. For example, the controversial moniker ‘girly photo’ (onnnanoko shashin), coined by male critics and the wider media, was a way of labelling the work produced by a group of women artists during the 1990s.
This one-day event reflects on the cultural, historical and political circumstances that led to a creative output of photographers making work in the 1990s and beyond, whose work continues to shape subsequent generations of artists. It also highlights the infrastructure and support that was available at that time.
Three artists from the Japanese Women Photographers exhibitions in London and Tokyo – AWANE Ai, NAGASHIMA Yurie and NAHARASHI Asako – speak on their practice. Each will also take part in a discussion about their work in relation to the attitudes toward, and achievements of, women photographers in Japan. Writer, critic and photography curator TAKEUCHI Mariko looks at the wider conditions for women in Japan in her keynote talk.
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Speaker biographies
AWANE Ai
IWANE Ai is a photographer who studied in the United States at Petrolia High School (1991), an alternative school located in Northern California, where she led an off-grid and self-sufficient life while studying. She began her career as a photographer in 1996. While focusing on assignments for magazines and various music-related work, her focus has been in observing and documenting niche communities around the world. [biog tbc]
NAGASHIMA Yurie
[biog here]
NAHARASHI Asako
NAHARASHI Asako is a photographer whose work spans a diverse range of themes, genres and formats. [biog to come]
TAKEUCHI Mariko
TAKEUCHI Mariko is a critic, writer, curator specialising in photography and a professor at Kyoto University of the Arts. She is curator of Japanese Women Photographers exhibition in Japan, featuring 30 artists’ work. She has contributed widely to newspapers, magazines, photobooks, and exhibition catalogues in Japan and abroad, and co-authored numerous publications. A Fulbright Grant took her to the United States, and she has served as a visiting researcher at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and the National Museum of Art, Osaka. Her curatorial work includes the Japan special feature at Paris Photo and the Japan section of the Dubai Photo Exhibition, among many other projects. Her editorial and translation credits include Disclosure: Rwandan Children Born of Rape by Jonathan Torgovnik, and her own books include Toward the Sea of Contradictions [Mujun no umi e] and Silence and Image: Essays on Japanese Photographers. She lives in Kyoto.
This course is programmed in connection to the exhibition I'm So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers 1950s to now, curated by Lesley A. Martin, Takeuchi Mariko and Pauline Vermare. The exhibition was organised by Aperture in collaboration with the Rencontres d’Arles with support from Kering | Women In Motion, Ishibashi Foundation, Anne Levy Charitable Trust,1970 Japan World's Exposition Memorial Fund and The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. Additional curatorial collaboration for the exhibition in London, with Taous Dahmani, The Photographers’ Gallery.