Aila.

Photographs by Rinko Kawauchi.

Foil, Tokyo, In English and, 2005. Japan, Np, numerous color illustrations, 9½x12".

Rinko Kawauchi, one of the most popular female photographers, won the 27th Ihei Kimura Photography Award in 2001. Her translucent photographs have won her many fans among the younger generation. Kawauchi depicts the fleeting nature of beauty in her pictures, highlighting the inseparability of the evanescence and cruelty of reality. In AILA, the long-awaited new book, you can enjoy her four-year works capturing moments of life begin.
In the Winter 2004 issue of Aperture, Charlotte Cotton (Head of Programming at the Photographer's Gallery, London) wrote a brilliant synopsis of the work so far of Rinko Kawauchi, a young Japanese photographer with whom most of our readers will be unfamiliar. It will be surprising that Kawauchi, who is 32 years old, has also just published Aila, her third book to be published with Little More of Tokyo, a hip publishing house that has also put out books on Yoshitomo Nara and Hideki Sato. The Japanese, generally, have approached photography in a manner less restrained than in the West, and more autonomous from their traditional art forms. As such, the photobook has been a major vehicle for the dissemination of photographic imagery, rarely representing the culmination of an artists’ career but rather serving as an expected step in the creative process. Cotton mentions in her article the “lack of preciousness about single images or reproduction quality” as being singularly Japanese. Aila is a perfect example of that approach, relying instead on a clear joy in observing her surroundings bolstered by a spirited and brisk editing of the work. In this case, Kawauchi tackles the daunting subject of ‘birth and life’ with a convincing naïveté. - Darius Himes

Ordering Information

This item is currently unavailable from photo-eye, Amazon and Amazon Marketplace.

Other recent books by Rinko Kawauchi

Our customers who bought this also purchased

Masonry OFF