
Time to go back... to the moon.
- Publisher
- Akaaka Art Publishing
- Year
- 2013
- ISBN
- 978-4-86541-007-5
- Specifications
- Softcover
266 x 210 mm
128 pages
Two cover versions (A and B)
Book design by Chikako Yamamoto
Nominated, Kimura Ihei Photography Award 2014
The shocking debut of Kawori Inbe: portraits of women shot over ten years that provoke the viewer with overwhelming energy. After a dialogue with each woman who answered her call to be photographed, Inbe builds that woman's inner landscape: inexpressible anger at a world that demands the ordinary, anger at herself at its source, sadness, and the humour and irony that arise only there. By exposing through staging what is usually seen as a wound or a weakness, she lets each sitter give off her own beauty and allure, and the portraits, set against the scenes and posters behind them, are also a sharp picture of Japan. The title refers to the traditional Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, whose magical princess must eventually return to her home on the moon; Inbe says her subjects harbour an imaginary landscape inside themselves. She photographs only women because they are more flexible in front of the camera, and she has little interest in youth or beauty or in wounds such as slit wrists: she wants the face, the originality born of life experience, the soul beyond face and body.