Photographing Japan

Yurie Nagashima 長島有里枝

(Image borrowed from
www.scaithebathhouse.com)

In class we were given a project to research of list of selected Japanese photographers who grasp Japan in their work. Researching the list I came across Yurie Nagashima, who maybe the hardest one to find out about on the internet and in the library I had difficulty finding her books. However from pictures selected from her works that I found on online exhibit listings I fell in love…no I fell curious to know more about her work.

It is said that Nagashima is Japan’s first leading female photographers who opened the doors and encourage or amped the female participation in Japanese photography.

Nagashima got her first recognition while still attending college at Musashino Art University in 1993. With the debut of one of her first pieces displaying family portraits…in the nude, gained her much attention and was received the Parco Award at the Urbanart #2 contest. After graduating in 1995 she continued her education but moved to the United States and attended California Institute of the Arts and graduated in 1999 with an MFA degree in Photography. After living in the United States for a few years she eventually moved back to Japan and started her career as a photographer.

The subject of Nagashima’s work isn’t a certain place, activity, or simply Japanese people. Her work is concentrated around the people who are closest to her, the people who are an influence in her life and creation of the culture and the world in which she lives in. Who she experiences Japan with and who she speaks Japanese to.

Family, boyfriends and even she are all people, Japanese, working, living and breathing but in her photos she captures people in the raw…seeing how most her portraits are shots of the subjects themselves in the nude. A bit of a photo book portraying everyday people…except without clothing. It it is the people she wants us to see, to appreciate and connected with. Not their clothes, their style or even lack thereof.

In my mind her photos are vivid and clear.

(Images borrowed from http://www.switch-pub.co.jp/library/photo/026/)

Nagashima’s work in relation to Japanese Visual Anthropology is difficult to describe because she steers away from symbols, labels and bold statements but shows the people themselves in every day environments. What is interesting is that if she is said to start the wave of Japanese female participation in photography…why this? And why did it become such a trend?

They are not capturing culture but their antics describe it. Nearly representing what young female Japanese adults would want to photograph. What in this culture made nude, simplistic images so important? Maybe to young Japanese females the timid aspects of love, family, and the people around them is what occupies the mind the most.

I feel Nagashima represents Japanese people in relation to culture as simply people and not a gimmick of where she comes from.

So many mainstream marketed ideas and symbols can be said about Japanese culture.

• Hello Kitty, Temples, Samurai, Pokémon, Ninjas, absurd fashion, kawaiii and hentai/pervert culture.

• Strict laws and seemingly everyone obeys, not obscenity, stand in place, and low crime.

How do those blend, how do those juxtapositions hold hand in hand in this country?

I feel like Nagashima is ripping Japanese people a part from these associated attributes of Japanese culture and defiantly showing them back as people

With lovers, homes and lives.

(Image borrowed from www.wavephotogallery.com)

(Image borrowed from http://www.fujifilm.co.jp/photomore/interview/nagashima_200507.html)

In her photos they are no longer adorned with mainstream Harajuku fashion and traditional sushi dishes alongside Geisha. Or whatever any travel book or foreign lens TV segment would show.

With nudity she makes people simply people and lashes out towards to the thought and laws of Japanese discrepancy in a back handed sort of style.

And in that aspect, in that artistic grasp of capturing the people who so happen to live in Japanese and obviously being a part of culture…she is very successful.

From her photos I feel more drawn to the people who contribute to culture than what I think culture has done to the people.

Can I write and pit out a million adjectives that properly describe Japanese culture from looking at these pictures? No.

But can I feel in what ways they are similar, shared but all the more different from my own.

(Image borrowed from w3art.es)

For information about the Photographer I used

• http://photoguide.jp/txt/Nagashima_Yurie
• http://www.fujifilm.co.jp/photomore/interview/nagashima_200507.html
  

Although her personal website
http://www.denshikosodate.com/

seems to be down