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Eriko Koga "Asakusa Zenzai"
Emon Photo Gallery
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Artists
Eriko Koga
“Asakusa Zenzai” is a series of documentary photographs that focuses on an old couple living in an old neighborhood of Tokyo. The title is reminiscent of the easygoing feeling and sentimentality of this old neighborhood. However, this exhibition is not meant for those who like high art that is easy to take in. In these 80 photographs, the little vicissitudes of life are unflinchingly portrayed, causing an aching in the hearts of their unwitting viewers.
Eriko Koga was born in Fukuoka in 1980. After graduating from Sophia University’s French Literature Department, she unwaveringly embarked on a career in photography, choosing to become a freelance photographer. She had wanted to become a photographer since high school, and while in college she studied photography on her own, going around town taking photos of people. When she was 22, she met an old couple at the Asakusa Sanja Festival and spent the following 6 years training her camera on their lives. Her record of Asakusa, which she began photographing in May 2003, was selected for the 2004 photo documentary “Nippon”, presented by Guardian Garden, and 3 years later was featured in the June 2007 issue of the photography magazine “Kaze no Tabibito”. Then, in April this year, the photography series she had been working on for 6 years, “Asakusa Zenzai”, was finally completed. It will be presented in a long-awaited exhibition this summer at our gallery in Hiroo.
Ms. Koga’s photographs are roughly textured. It would be hard to say that her technical control of light is flattering or refined. However, even so, you rarely find photos this strikingly unforgettable. Perhaps these works are so moving because they capture lives as they truly are: the lives of a couple aging, year by year. Like the spectrum of a fading rainbow, the shining vermilion light intersects with the lonely blue-gray light of wasted things in these photographs. Ms. Koga controlled the timing of her shots while portraying this old couple as they are. The works in this exhibition can be seen as a symbol of the tradeoff between physical richness and a modern society that is gradually losing its humanity. In recent years, the tradeoff for our emphasis on economic development or social progress is a society that cultivates excessive individualism and inequality, resulting in many people being abandoned. The old couple portrayed in “Asakusa Zenzai” may be among those very people. However, thanks to the young and promising Ms. Koga, for whom becoming a photographer was everything, this old couple has not been completely abandoned. “Nothing I could say could better express what is in these photographs. I would be thrilled if people feel something beyond what can be seen when they look at these photos.”
May 2008. Seiji Komatsu, Director of Emon Inc.
Eriko Koga was born in Fukuoka in 1980. After graduating from Sophia University’s French Literature Department, she unwaveringly embarked on a career in photography, choosing to become a freelance photographer. She had wanted to become a photographer since high school, and while in college she studied photography on her own, going around town taking photos of people. When she was 22, she met an old couple at the Asakusa Sanja Festival and spent the following 6 years training her camera on their lives. Her record of Asakusa, which she began photographing in May 2003, was selected for the 2004 photo documentary “Nippon”, presented by Guardian Garden, and 3 years later was featured in the June 2007 issue of the photography magazine “Kaze no Tabibito”. Then, in April this year, the photography series she had been working on for 6 years, “Asakusa Zenzai”, was finally completed. It will be presented in a long-awaited exhibition this summer at our gallery in Hiroo.
Ms. Koga’s photographs are roughly textured. It would be hard to say that her technical control of light is flattering or refined. However, even so, you rarely find photos this strikingly unforgettable. Perhaps these works are so moving because they capture lives as they truly are: the lives of a couple aging, year by year. Like the spectrum of a fading rainbow, the shining vermilion light intersects with the lonely blue-gray light of wasted things in these photographs. Ms. Koga controlled the timing of her shots while portraying this old couple as they are. The works in this exhibition can be seen as a symbol of the tradeoff between physical richness and a modern society that is gradually losing its humanity. In recent years, the tradeoff for our emphasis on economic development or social progress is a society that cultivates excessive individualism and inequality, resulting in many people being abandoned. The old couple portrayed in “Asakusa Zenzai” may be among those very people. However, thanks to the young and promising Ms. Koga, for whom becoming a photographer was everything, this old couple has not been completely abandoned. “Nothing I could say could better express what is in these photographs. I would be thrilled if people feel something beyond what can be seen when they look at these photos.”
May 2008. Seiji Komatsu, Director of Emon Inc.
Schedule | Jul 15 (Tue) 2008-Aug 9 (Sat) 2008 Opening Hours Information
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| Fee | Free | ||||
| Website | http://www.emoninc.com/test/exhibition/kogaeriko.html | ||||
| Venue | Emon Photo Gallery | ||||
| Location | B1F Togo Bldg., 5-11-12 Minamiazabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0047 | ||||
| Access | 3 minute walk from exit 3 at Hiroo Station on the Hibiya line. | ||||
| Phone | 03-5793-5437 | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it |
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