I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the Nineteen Fifties to Now, The Photographers’ Gallery, London

Curated by Lesley A. Martin, Takeuchi Mariko, and Pauline Vermare

I’m So Happy You Are Here gives a much-needed counterpoint, complement, and problem to historic precedents and the established canon—an electrifying growth of our understanding of Japanese photographic historical past, but in addition of photograph historical past writ giant. Over the previous decade, the world of images has made a concerted effort to fill essential gaps in its historiography. The excavation and restoration of girls’s work serves as a testomony to the liberating nature of self-representation and self-expression, and to the significance of images as a medium to specific and share one’s personal story: to be heard and to be seen. This restorative survey presents a variety of photographic approaches delivered to bear on the experiences and views of girls on their lives and on Japanese society, and showcases their creativity by way of key photographs, installation-based works, video, and photobooks. With a deal with materials from the Nineteen Fifties to now, I’m So Happy You Are Here presents a choice of intergenerational artists—a lot of whom have been acknowledged for his or her important contributions, whereas others have developed distinctive and essential practices with out substantial public recognition. This assortment of historic and up to date works weaves collectively three main motifs—observations of on a regular basis life which might be each delicate and blunt; essential views on the roles inhabited—and infrequently reinterpreted—by Japanese girls; in addition to experiments with and extensions of the photographic type. Together, these works present a strong basis for a extra nuanced and expansive dialog concerning the contributions of Japanese girls to images.

Featuring the work of Hara Mikiko, Hiromix, Ishikawa Mao, Ishiuchi Miyako, Katayama Mari, Kawauchi Rinko, Komatsu Hiroko, Kon Michiko, Nagashima Yurie, Narahashi Asako, Nishimura Tamiko, Noguchi Rika, Nomura Sakiko, Okabe Momo, Okanoue Toshiko, Onodera Yuki, Sawada Tomoko, Shiga Lieko, Sugiura Kunié, Tawada Yuki, Tokiwa Toyoko, Ushioda Tokuko, Watanabe Hitomi, Yamazawa Eiko, and Yanagi Miwa, amongst others.

I’m So Happy You Are Here is organized by Aperture in collaboration with the Rencontres d’Arles, with help from Kering | Women In Motion, Ishibashi Foundation, Anne Levy Charitable Trust, 1970 Japan World’s Exposition Memorial Fund, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. We want to thank Sato Masako, Contact, Tokyo who oversaw manufacturing of the present in Japan. Aperture exhibitions are supported by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc.

Pauline Vermare is the Phillip and Edith Leonian Curator, Photography, Brooklyn Museum. Previously, she served because the cultural director of Magnum Photos in New York, and curator on the International Center of Photography (ICP) and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Takeuchi Mariko is a images critic, curator, and professor at Kyoto University of the Arts. Previously, she served as visiting researcher on the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and on the National Museum of Art, Osaka.

Lesley A. Martin is govt director of Printed Matter. Formerly, she was the inventive director of Aperture, the place she served as editor on multiple hundred books on images, and founding writer of The PhotoBook Review.

Image credit score: Okabe Momo, Untitled, 2020; from the collection Ilmatar. Courtesy the
artist and Aperture