Emerging Artists Exhibition: Eriko Masaoka — Still Rowing the River Ahead
at Irie Taikichi Memorial Museum of Photography Nara City
07/01/2023 – 09/10/2023
In early summer 2023, I showed my work in a two-person exhibition, the “Emerging Artists Exhibition,” at the Irie Taikichi Memorial Nara City Museum of Photography.
Two series were shown there: the black-and-white series “In the Flap of a Bird’s Wing, Water Dries up” and the color series “Still Rowing the River Ahead.”
“Still Rowing the River Ahead” was photographed over five years in Munich after I left Japan in 2017, and over about two years after moving to a small village in France.
It follows what happened in my life — the birth of my children, the pandemic, the death of my husband’s younger brother, my divorce, and the life that came after.
This series was born in a situation where I felt as if I were desperately rowing a boat every day, trying not to capsize, like the Japanese title of this exhibition, “Rowing the River in Front of Me.”
There were days when I could not speak the language. Days when I felt as if I had been thrown into rough water.
Daily life continued. Still, the children in front of me were dear, growing and changing, showing new expressions every day.
This series is still continuing now, in my fourth year since moving to France, in the middle of that flow of time.
After leaving Japan, pregnancy and childbirth, raising children with little support from my busy husband, life abroad, and attending language school all overlapped. For a long time, I felt that I could not make photographic work at all. But later, when I looked back, I realized that many photographs remained.
All of the photographs in this series were taken with a smartphone. For me, raising two small children, this was not a stylistic choice. It was necessary. Carrying a large DSLR while going out with two children, or developing film and printing in a darkroom, was no longer realistic.
This work was made in a period when I felt frustrated by how difficult it had become to make work inside childcare and daily life.
At first, I did not think that photographs taken with a smartphone could become a work. But that was not true.
This work is composed of photographs that were only possible through the medium of a smartphone, as a new form of contemporary snapshot.
In the exhibition, the photographs were arranged in chronological order. Beneath each image, I placed a small note with the date and what had happened at that time.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
「目の前の川で漕ぐ」は、展示当時は約7年間にわたって続いているカラー写真シリーズでしたが、その後現在も継続しており、
約9年間に及ぶシリーズに成長しています。
2017年に日本を離れ、ドイツのミュンヘンに5年間住み、その後フランスの小さな村に移り3年、現在もそこで暮らしています。
このシリーズは、その間に起こった大きな人生の変化、子どもたちの誕生と成長、パンデミック、夫の弟の死別、そして夫との別れを綴っています。
エッセイのような文章を織り交ぜながらの構成、一人の女性とその家族、そして人生の展開や歩みを追い続ける物語を目指しています。
シリーズの写真はすべてスマートフォンで撮影されました。
展示されている写真は年代順に並べられ、写真の下には当時の記憶が記されています。
Still Rowing the River Ahead / 目の前の川で漕ぐ
Pigment Prints exhibited
