Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows ed. by Amanda Maddox (review)

Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows is the exhibition catalogue that accompanied the photographer’s first major retrospective outside Japan, at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, from October 6, 2015, to February 21, 2016. A retrospective exhibition outside Japan and a comprehensive book in English about Ishiuchi’s work were overdue.

After taking up photography at the age of 28, Ishiuchi Miyako (b. 1947) revisited her hometown, Yokosuka, in 1977, recording the U.S. Navy town with a handheld camera. The Yokosuka of her black-and-white photographs is a dark place, full of stains and scars and inextricably intertwined with her childhood; the American presence is often directly or indirectly visible. This Yokosuka Story series, her first significant body of work, was to become the beginning of a career which has now spanned over 35 years and recently led to a major photography prize: the 2014 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. Ishiuchi has been one of the few women active and successful since the 1970s in the Japanese photography field, which has traditionally been strongly dominated by men, and set the stage for younger female photographers. Her oeuvre can be divided into three main phases. The first phase consists of Yokosuka Story (1977), Apartment (1978), and Endless Night (1981). This trilogy of grainy black-and-white photographs features old building surfaces, jerry-built apartments, and rooms of former nightclubs. The second phase, beginning with the series 1.9.4.7 (1989), in which Ishiuchi photographed the hands and feet of women who were born in the same year she was, focuses on the human body and reveals a variety of skin textures and scars in extreme detail. The series Mother’s (2000–2005), which represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 2005, marks the beginning of the third phase, in which Ishiuchi has mostly worked with color photography. It consists of close-up images of Ishiuchi’s mother’s body, taken during old age, and large photographs of the deceased mother’s possessions, such as her underwear and lipstick. Since 2007, Ishiuchi has worked on a series titled/hiroshima, photographing clothing and other objects formerly owned by victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The objects are part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum collection, and Ishiuchi presents them in color photographs that convey a ghostly memento mori beauty. Ishiuchi’s photography has been concerned with different motifs, ranging from deserted bordellos in Japan to the personal belongings of Frida Kahlo in Mexico. However, one topic has been consistently relevant: the visual effects of time and decay, intertwined with human memory.

Since representing Japan at the Venice Biennale in 2005, Ishiuchi’s work has been shown in a large number of solo and group exhibitions in and outside Japan. She has published her photographs in numerous photo books, such as Innocence (Akaaka Publishing) in 2007, /hiroshima (Shūeisha) in 2008, and Frida by Ishiuchi (RM) in 2013. Before Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows was published, the most extensive exhibition catalogues that provided an overview on her art were Hiroshima/Yokosuka: Ishiuchi Miyako from 2008 and Ishiuchi Miyako: Hasselblad Award 2014. Published by the Meguro Museum of Art, Hiroshima/Yokosuka accompanied a major retrospective exhibition of Ishiuchi’s work, ranging from her first series, Yokosuka Story, to her most recent work at the time, /hiroshima.¹ Divided into seven chapters, the well-researched, comprehensive book provides the reader with a chronological list of all photographic series by Ishiuchi, major essays about her photography, interviews, and a well-illustrated list of all exhibitions and publications. The book comprises 411 pages and is a “bible” for scholars of Ishiuchi’s work; however, it was published in Japanese only. Ishiuchi Miyako: Hasselblad Award 2014 features a beautifully produced selection of plates and two short essays. Christopher Phillips examined Ishiuchi’s early work, and an essay by the author of this book review interpreted the particular aesthetic of Ishiuchi’s work as a “bittersweet beauty of ephemerality.”² This book accompanied...