Naoko Kumagai "Anemone"

Gallery Speak For

Finished

Artists

Naoko Kumagai

Naoko Kumagai is a photographer who works in a wide variety of fields from fashion to advertising, developing her career based on a unique philosophy towards photography. Many photographers train their lens on society as a mode of stealth for understanding it better. Kumagai, who was given a camera of her own from an early age, was always shooting something or other, using it as a way to establish a sort of dialogue with objects. In this way Kumagai's camera became a sort of bodily extension of herself, a native tool that opened up access to her own emotions and sentiments.

Her life as a lone 20 year old art student in France also provided endless inspiration and occasion for producing plenty of photographs. What drives Kumagai's finger towards her shutter is the search for love: a sort of "bellows" movement that sends forth her emotions towards the objects she beholds. Faster and more profound than abstract thought, this act of taking pictures transmits a sort of emotional pathos through the camera. This sort of life centered around photography carries on even today, amid the busy demands of a professional photographer, expressed in the bases that lie at the construction of her beautiful work and its delicate nuances, qualities much respected and supported by her clients.

This exhibition is created out of this personal photographic theory, and patterned after a kind of bittersweet love story, featuring photographic still lifes and landscapes that are mostly being exhibited for the first time. In addition, works by popular model Asami
Imajuku, a keen admirer of Kumagai's work, will be on display alongside the "Anemone" works.

Schedule

Dec 19 (Fri) 2008-Jan 7 (Wed) 2009