International Women Photographers Series—I’m So Happy You Are Here
Episode #87
Summary
A trailblazing book chronicling the fundamental and consequential contributions of Japanese women photographers.
Episode Notes:
Mariko Takeuchi and Pauline Vermare discuss their collaborative project creating a restorative history of Japanese photography. Offering a critical and celebratory counterpoint to the invisibility of Japanese women photographers this expansive and rigorously researched book features 25 portfolios, multiple essays and an illustrated bibliography of photobooks by Japanese women photographers. This bold book embraces emotion, experimentation and provocation in myriad forms of beauty, humor, and deeply spirited connections.
In this conversation, Mariko and Pauline discuss, among other things:
Pulling back layers of cultural understanding of being a women
Expanding vocabulary and objects of study
Womanhood, daughterhood and caregiving
Physical involvement with the medium
Utilizing self-portraiture to reclaim agency over one's body
Making tangible that which is invisible
An outward expression of internal experience
Including the voices of photographers in the essays and text
Making and remaking meaning
Referenced in the episode:
A World History of Women Photographers by Luce Lebart and Marie Robert
What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843–1999 by Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich
Women Making Art: History, Subjectivity, Aesthetics by Marsha Meskimmon
Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed
World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2023
Self-Portraits by Yurie Nagashima
Ume-me - Todays Happening by Ume Kayo
The Memories of Others - Akihiko Okamura / Photo Museum Ireland