Illuminance Rinko Kawauchi
Illuminance is a celebration of light and a tribute to the deepest depths of the dark. It shows the poetry of the commonplace. So: ‘Let there be light’.
Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi (1972) became a overnight sensation with the simultaneous publication of a trio of “first” books in 2001: Utatane (siesta), Hanabi (firework) and Hanako (a portrait of a young woman of that name). Rinko Kawauchi has found acclaim worldwide for her nuanced use of color and the unerring mastery of her compositions. Furthermore her attention to small gestures and coincidental details enables her to cast a gaze of enchantment upon her daily surroundings that is always fresh and new.
Illuminance opens with an eclipse: the moon obscuring the sun from view save a glittering halo of light. It also ends with an eclipse, just a fraction later, the sun is just coming out again. And in between, as a flashback, all kind of images shot by Kawauchi. Heightened by formal repetition, juxtaposition, echo and refrain. This gives the images of everyday scenes a dreamlike quality.
The book is, as its title suggests, about the symbolic power of light. Rinko Kawauchi takes us on a journey that meanders through luminosity and darkness. She finds beauty in the absolutely ordinary and persuades us to appreciate it too. The poetry of the commonplace. The work evokes a dreamlike state. Her impressions hover somewhere between memory and dream.
The dreamlike world of Illuminance maintains Kawauchi’s reputation as a ‘feel-good’ photographer albeit with an ominuous hint of a darker side. This dark side surfaces at intervals and therefore has an impotrant shock function when it does so. The one constant is the startling beauty of her pictures that constitute a frank celebration of the wonder of life.
Ten years after publishing Illuminance in 2011 Aperture has brought back the book into print.
Illuminance: The Tenth Anniversary Edition
Photographer: Rinko Kawauchi
Publisher: Aperture
Originally published in 2011
Hardback, clothbound with tipped-in photo , 21 x 28 cm, 384 pages, 130 images
Texts by David Chandler, Lesley A. Martin and Masatake Shinohara
Mentioned in The Photobook: A History Volume 3, Martin Parr and Gerry Badger