Important Dates and Background Knowledge:
Born April 6, 1972 in Shiga Japan - Rinko Kawauchi is 49 years old and is based in Tokyo. She graduated from Seian University of Art and Design in 1993. She worked in commercial photography at an advertising agency for several years before she began her career of taking photos for fine art/photography. Her first solo fine art exhibit was in 1998 - titled: UTATANE in Guardian Garden, Tokyo. She has done many exhibitions all over the world, (almost) every year from 1998 to 2022. Her most recent exhibit is a group exhibit lasting from February 11th to March 13th of 2022 in the Higashi Osaka Art Center.
Style:
Rinko Kawauchi is a Japanese photographer. Her pictures often depict everyday life in a very poetic and open (non-metaphorical) sense. Her photos have often been described as visual haikus for their very uncluttered, non-metaphorical nature. She also often writes haikus to accompany the photos she takes. She takes careful care and consideration in the editing that goes into her photos. I find that many of her photos are edited so that the lighting or the colors in the photos are gentler than they normally might be, and the faded quality paired with the types of lighting she uses make her images feel more like memories than anything else.
Philosophy:
Rinko’s philosophy about her photographs is disclosed both through many articles and interviews about her. In an interview with Culture Trip, she says ‘I want imagination in the photographs I take. It’s like a prologue. You wonder, “What’s going on?” You feel something is going to happen’. Rinko’s careful composition and editing is not without purpose. It is meant to give the viewer the impression that something is about to happen, like you’ve caught the tail end of a scene and you can’t help but to wonder “what is going on?” In many of Rinko’s beautifully written haikus she goes more in depth about the meaning behind some of the photos, or she provides a sort of dialogue for them. Rinko often focuses on the duality of life and the juxtaposition and fragility of life and death that play within the light and shadows of her images. She captures “small events glimpsed in passing.” To me, Rinko’s images provide a simplistic beauty that often remind me of short snapshots from faded dreams that slipped from my mind the moment I opened my eyes.
Influences:
Rinko’s previous work experience as a commercial photographer, before her career as a fine arts photographer, influenced her work through her compositional arrangements of her photos. I really like her philosophy and images, I especially like the method with which she works. She caters to her own whims and photographs whatever catches her eye. I like that she catches the moments of life that often get overlooked, and the beautiful simplicity that her images have, especially since they often narrate the interplay between life, death, and all the moments in between. I would love to be able to follow this type of philosophy in my own freeform kind of photography, and I think that researching her works has given me a greater appreciation for what she does.
Image Comparisons:
I did my best to recreate the original version of “Illuminance” by making sure the sun was in a similar position, as was the glare, however, in my version of the image the sun was noticeably brighter that day than the one in Rinko’s original. I think that in Rinko’s original version, she certainly did more editing than I did in order to obtain that dream-like atmosphere that she so loves to create. I really enjoyed getting out into the sun, especially with spring coming up, and I think that taking this photo and keeping in mind Rinko’s mission with her photos was to enjoy the small moments in life, so I’m grateful that RInko’s photography has enabled me to be able to enjoy the smaller moments in life that I might have otherwise missed should I have not kept her photography philosophy in mind.
I’m not gonna lie, for this recreation, I think I did significantly worse at than “Illuminance” and here’s why. I immensely respect Rinko’s ability to make every single image feel like a memory or a dream. As you can see, I did my best to mimic the cut and placement of the watermelon rind and the seeds, however, the editing in Rinko's image outs higher values on the blue, pink/red, and green values which gives the image a cooler tone. Rinko's plate is an interesting one, there appears to be a smear on it, I do not have a plate that looks like that, however, this does touch heavily on many memories for me because my grandmother (who we used to visit a lot before COVID) has a plate that looks almost exactly like that. The bite marks on Rinko's melon rind are also different than mine. So I do not think that this was my best replica mage, however, I tried my best, but fell short.
For this replication, I did not have ice cubes in the particular shape that Rinko has hers, however, I did have a similar looking cup. In order to get that more plain, less distracting background, I put a piece of printer paper under the glass before I took the photo. Rinko's lighting for this image also seems to be paler than any of the lights I have in my house, all of the lights in my house are incandescent and have that yellowish tint to them. The edge of Rinko's cup is also blurrier than I could get mine to be, which makes the focus of the image, not the cup itself, but the ice cube in it. All in all, this replication from me wasn't that bad, but there were some elements missing that I could have done better at.
Artist's Statement
So, when choosing images to replicate, although Rinko had many great options for me to want to try, I ultimately picked the images that reminded me of summertime. A cool glass of water, the sun beating down on you with a fan running in the corner, a slice of refreshing watermelon to treat yourself to. All of those things reminded me of summer, and they evoked in me some of the purest memories that I have of summer, which ultimately (I think) captured what Rinko's mission and philosophy is all about. capturing the small moments we miss, yet hold a place deep in our memories that tie us together at the seams. That to me is what Rinko's photography is about, and I went into the replication process with the intention to honor that and do my best to follow suit.
Resources:
Rinko's Website
Women Art
Culture Trip
*All of Rinko's images belong to Rinko and were obtained from her website as is hyperlinked above*
Women Art
Culture Trip
*All of Rinko's images belong to Rinko and were obtained from her website as is hyperlinked above*