Forever (and again)

January 14–July 6, 2018

Izu Photo Museum is delighted to stage “Forever (and again),” an exhibition of works primarily from our permanent collection.

From day to day we encounter many different people, and from time to time, we are parted from them by death. The relentless flow of time, heedless of the lives and deaths of individuals, cannot be resisted, and in its face, we may feel powerless. Yet even when one life comes to an end, memories etched deep in the heart are passed on by those left behind, living on with new meaning. Capturing a moment in the ongoing flow of time, photographs reflect the accumulated past and reawaken in the viewer stories in the form of memories. Works by five contemporary artists—Shizuka Yokomizo, Rika Noguchi, Rinko Kawauchi, Yurie Nagashima, and Terri Weifenbach—will offer much food for thought as we ponder the links between time and memory, and the nature of permanence.

 

 

About the works

Shizuka Yokomizo

A fresh take on the concept of time, Forever (and again) is Yokomizo’s first work to be shown at a museum for seven years

 

Yokomizo’s work on video, which juxtaposes and projects scenes of four elderly ladies in Britain playing a Chopin waltz, and views of their rooms and gardens, reflects the cumulative time they have lived, and the persistence of time, ending and starting all over again, like a round in which the main melody disappears and reappears over and over. Through Chopin’s waltz—music that has been around longer than the ladies—Yokomizo challenges the viewer to consider the ephemeral yet eternal nature of time.

 

Shizuka Yokomizo’s artist statement

What I tried to evoke by placing the contrasting footage of each lady’s dynamic performance, and scenes almost completely motionless, alongside each other, and repeating them, was transience and permanence, and most of all my own undeniable experience of time, as I stand before the screen.

 

 

Rika Noguchi

First Japanese museum outing for To the Night Planet, capturing the light-filled streets of Berlin

 

Noguchi, who has produced numerous works on the theme of light, shot a complete roll of film out the window of a bus she rode regularly in Berlin while there. Starlight is delivered from the past of stars a vast distance away, to the earth of the future. Filled with light in diverse forms, the nighttime streets of Berlin were at once familiar to Noguchi, and at the same time resembled starlight heading toward a future not yet upon us. As she captures the lightscapes that leap in quick succession into the viewfinder, that light lures the viewer into a different world embracing both past and future.

 

From Rika Noguchi’s photo collection To the Night Planet

As the day draws to a close, I gaze at the scene outside my usual double-decker bus. As the sky darkens, light appears in myriad hues. The bus makes its way slowly along the night planet.

Pointing my camera through the window, I see a parade of new lightscapes in the viewfinder. Each moment is a precious photo opportunity, and I click the shutter over and over.

Reviewing in order the resulting single roll of film, invariably I recall more vividly the moments that for some reason I did not capture. Perhaps therein lies the secret of photography.

 

 

 

Rinko Kawauchi

Cui Cui—thirteen years of family photos

 

Cui Cui consists of photos taken by Kawauchi of her own family over a period of thirteen years. “Cui Cui” is French for the chirping of a small bird, and is also the “say cheese” equivalent when taking photographs. Vegetables harvested from the garden, gentle shafts of sunlight shining into rooms, and other everyday scenes as natural and uncontrived as the tweeting of that little bird, intersect with major life events symbolized by commemorative photographs—some taken on the cue “Cui Cui”—such as a brother’s wedding, the death of her grandfather, and the birth of a baby; forming layer upon layer of family memories.

 

From Rinko Kawauchi’s photo collection Cui Cui

Until I was fifteen, there were eight of us in the family.

One died, then another, and now my grandmother lives by herself in Shiga, my parents together in Osaka, my older brother has started his own family, and my younger brother and I each live alone in Tokyo… Time passes equally for all, and the shape of the family changes.

I can never return to being part of a family of eight, but nor will I ever forget growing up loved and protected by the adults around me.

Those memories will sustain me until the day I die.

 

 

Yurie Nagashima

SWISS – inspired by photos of her late grandmother

 

SWISS consists of day-to-day photographs taken by Nagashima during time as an artist-in-residence in Switzerland with her son in 2007. Two decades after the death of her grandmother, a keen gardener, Nagashima came upon a small box containing bundles of colorful flower photos taken by the older lady. Seemingly ordinary flower shots preserve the viewpoint of a grandmother with a conscientious affection for flowers, and twenty years after her death, these photos at last began to tell Nagashima the story of her grandmother’s past. With her late grandmother in mind, Nagashima engages with people through flowers, turns her thoughts to those far away, and through the garden of her Swiss home and flowers blooming nearby, conveys a delicate engagement with the people she loves, as a mother and a woman.

 

From Nagashima Yurie’s photo collection SWISS

My thoughts, like flowers, start to fade, then try to bloom once more

When I’m hanging out the washing

Or listening to my child talking

Those thoughts are always breathing, quietly but resolutely

In some place so deep light never reaches

 

 

 

Terri Weifenbach

Kakita River springs – Observing the cycle of life in the gushing of springwater

 

To make Kakita River springs Weifenbach, whose work captures familiar landscapes in nature, combined photos and video footage taken during a stay in Shizuoka in 2015. Here gently flowing water is presented as washing away the past in the manner of the ceaseless flow of time. In the endlessly flowing water, and the tiny leaf that persists as it is swirled around by that flow, Weifenbach identifies nature beginning to change as soon as it emerges, and the vicissitudes of life. The sequence photographs taken in the same location are snapshots of nature’s constant morphing, showing the paths of flowing water like spun thread, and the wealth of expression in nature, via light and shade.

 

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"forever (and again)" Izu Photo Museum

Forever (and again)

January 14–July 6, 2018

Izu Photo Museum is delighted to stage “Forever (and again),” an exhibition of works primarily from our permanent collection.

From day to day we encounter many different people, and from time to time, we are parted from them by death. The relentless flow of time, heedless of the lives and deaths of individuals, cannot be resisted, and in its face, we may feel powerless. Yet even when one life comes to an end, memories etched deep in the heart are passed on by those left behind, living on with new meaning. Capturing a moment in the ongoing flow of time, photographs reflect the accumulated past and reawaken in the viewer stories in the form of memories. Works by five contemporary artists—Shizuka Yokomizo, Rika Noguchi, Rinko Kawauchi, Yurie Nagashima, and Terri Weifenbach—will offer much food for thought as we ponder the links between time and memory, and the nature of permanence.

 

 

About the works

Shizuka Yokomizo

A fresh take on the concept of time, Forever (and again) is Yokomizo’s first work to be shown at a museum for seven years

 

Yokomizo’s work on video, which juxtaposes and projects scenes of four elderly ladies in Britain playing a Chopin waltz, and views of their rooms and gardens, reflects the cumulative time they have lived, and the persistence of time, ending and starting all over again, like a round in which the main melody disappears and reappears over and over. Through Chopin’s waltz—music that has been around longer than the ladies—Yokomizo challenges the viewer to consider the ephemeral yet eternal nature of time.

 

Shizuka Yokomizo’s artist statement

What I tried to evoke by placing the contrasting footage of each lady’s dynamic performance, and scenes almost completely motionless, alongside each other, and repeating them, was transience and permanence, and most of all my own undeniable experience of time, as I stand before the screen.

 

 

Rika Noguchi

First Japanese museum outing for To the Night Planet, capturing the light-filled streets of Berlin

 

Noguchi, who has produced numerous works on the theme of light, shot a complete roll of film out the window of a bus she rode regularly in Berlin while there. Starlight is delivered from the past of stars a vast distance away, to the earth of the future. Filled with light in diverse forms, the nighttime streets of Berlin were at once familiar to Noguchi, and at the same time resembled starlight heading toward a future not yet upon us. As she captures the lightscapes that leap in quick succession into the viewfinder, that light lures the viewer into a different world embracing both past and future.

 

From Rika Noguchi’s photo collection To the Night Planet

As the day draws to a close, I gaze at the scene outside my usual double-decker bus. As the sky darkens, light appears in myriad hues. The bus makes its way slowly along the night planet.

Pointing my camera through the window, I see a parade of new lightscapes in the viewfinder. Each moment is a precious photo opportunity, and I click the shutter over and over.

Reviewing in order the resulting single roll of film, invariably I recall more vividly the moments that for some reason I did not capture. Perhaps therein lies the secret of photography.

 

 

 

Rinko Kawauchi

Cui Cui—thirteen years of family photos

 

Cui Cui consists of photos taken by Kawauchi of her own family over a period of thirteen years. “Cui Cui” is French for the chirping of a small bird, and is also the “say cheese” equivalent when taking photographs. Vegetables harvested from the garden, gentle shafts of sunlight shining into rooms, and other everyday scenes as natural and uncontrived as the tweeting of that little bird, intersect with major life events symbolized by commemorative photographs—some taken on the cue “Cui Cui”—such as a brother’s wedding, the death of her grandfather, and the birth of a baby; forming layer upon layer of family memories.

 

From Rinko Kawauchi’s photo collection Cui Cui

Until I was fifteen, there were eight of us in the family.

One died, then another, and now my grandmother lives by herself in Shiga, my parents together in Osaka, my older brother has started his own family, and my younger brother and I each live alone in Tokyo… Time passes equally for all, and the shape of the family changes.

I can never return to being part of a family of eight, but nor will I ever forget growing up loved and protected by the adults around me.

Those memories will sustain me until the day I die.

 

 

Yurie Nagashima

SWISS – inspired by photos of her late grandmother

 

SWISS consists of day-to-day photographs taken by Nagashima during time as an artist-in-residence in Switzerland with her son in 2007. Two decades after the death of her grandmother, a keen gardener, Nagashima came upon a small box containing bundles of colorful flower photos taken by the older lady. Seemingly ordinary flower shots preserve the viewpoint of a grandmother with a conscientious affection for flowers, and twenty years after her death, these photos at last began to tell Nagashima the story of her grandmother’s past. With her late grandmother in mind, Nagashima engages with people through flowers, turns her thoughts to those far away, and through the garden of her Swiss home and flowers blooming nearby, conveys a delicate engagement with the people she loves, as a mother and a woman.

 

From Nagashima Yurie’s photo collection SWISS

My thoughts, like flowers, start to fade, then try to bloom once more

When I’m hanging out the washing

Or listening to my child talking

Those thoughts are always breathing, quietly but resolutely

In some place so deep light never reaches

 

 

 

Terri Weifenbach

Kakita River springs – Observing the cycle of life in the gushing of springwater

 

To make Kakita River springs Weifenbach, whose work captures familiar landscapes in nature, combined photos and video footage taken during a stay in Shizuoka in 2015. Here gently flowing water is presented as washing away the past in the manner of the ceaseless flow of time. In the endlessly flowing water, and the tiny leaf that persists as it is swirled around by that flow, Weifenbach identifies nature beginning to change as soon as it emerges, and the vicissitudes of life. The sequence photographs taken in the same location are snapshots of nature’s constant morphing, showing the paths of flowing water like spun thread, and the wealth of expression in nature, via light and shade.

 

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