M/E

Abeille et les dieux 

“Abeille au coeur des fleurs
Fleurs dans les jardins
Jardins entourés de murs en terre
Murs dans les villages
Villages au coeur du Japon
Japon dans le monde
Monde au sein des dieux
Puis, puis… les dieux
Au coeur des frêles abeilles”

— Misuzu Kaneko 

This poem by Misuzu Kaneko, an unjustly forgotten Japanese poet from the early 20th century who was rediscovered by the Japanese public at the time of the Fukushima disaster (her poems were read on television), inspired Rinko Kawauchi to write this new book. Paying homage to this author, the photographer explores our relationship with the world, encouraging us to reconsider our links as human beings with nature.

Rinko Kawauchi has named her book M/E in reference to Mother/Earth, but has kept only the initials (me in English) to emphasise the link she has with Mother Earth. She casts a singular, gentle eye over the living world to capture its fragile beauty: that of a dewdrop on a leaf, or the gigantic front of a glacier in front of which levitates the white halo of a cloud of steam caused by the ice collapsing into the sea. The artist’s approach is highly intuitive: his images are not constructed, they ‘just happen’. The result: images that are almost meditative, as if emerging from a dream. They can be poetic, mysterious, even bizarre. What’s more, they are not perfectly clear. Rinko Kawauchi seeks out the ephemeral, capturing that fleeting moment before the eye accommodates itself.

The artist captures her immediate environment and her family as well as more spectacular subjects. In this book, she presents a dialogue between images from Iceland and Japan, focusing mainly on water: clouds, rain, rainbows, ice, snow, torrents, mist… The book is constructed by playing with the idea of transparency, which is so dear to his heart. The images are printed on very fine Japanese paper and are gradually revealed. White pages, like silences, punctuate the sequences. The cover, meanwhile, is splattered with shards of silver that reflect the light.