Dark Light (SIGNED, WITH OBI)

Kyoko Uchida
Dark Light (SIGNED, WITH OBI)

Photographs: Kyoko Uchida

Publisher: K.Studio

128 pages

Pictures: 66

Year: 2013

Comments: Softcover under dust jacket, 30 x 26,7 cm, b&w photographs. First edition. Signed by Kyoko Uchida. With obi. In very good condition.

A collection of works by Japanese female photographer Kyoko Uchida, winner of the 26th "Society of Photography" Award in Japan (2014).

Dark Light is a collection of images which reflect photographer Kyoko Uchida's personal history. Here within this collection of self portraits is a depiction of Uchida's exploration of the self. Inspired by the light being entered into her room, Uchida utiizes this natural source of illumination in crafting her invisioned images. The body is always at focus and displayed whether it be in and amongst a group objects within a still life portrait or captured through a reflection of a mirror in disjointed parts, Kyoko Uchida explores notions of the self through the imagined abstract. The resulting images are strong, imbued with signs and meaning and represent the photographic manifestiation of Uchida's emotions.

—Afterword by Issei Suda

Just after 2 p.m. on a winter day, a thrilling view appears before my eyes. A beam of light passes through my glass door and illuminates my room. In that moment, vivid, mysterious expressions rise forth from the ordinary potted plants and ceramic dolls along my wall. I start pressing the shutter in the hope that somehow I can express the surprise and excitement that I feel into photographic paper.
The plants that I water daily, the cicada carcasses that I find in my garden, and the ribbon curtains that I prepare just for my pic-tures, these are things that are always available. But when I want to use the powerful light of the afternoon sun, and at other similar times, my precious photography time is limited to the hours afforded to me by the sun's light. When I include my own body in a photograph, because I have to check the composition and find the right expression for my body, I end up working three times as much. When I add myself to a photograph, I find many times that my composition estimates were wrong. Finding a single film that I can use for a print is often a trial of endurance.
But, the joy that I feel when I get the film that I had been aiming for is exceptional, and that joy inspires me to keep moving forward.
When I was an art-school student in my teens, I enjoyed making self-portraits in pencil, watercolors, and other mediums. Each stroke in these self-portraits was full of the feelings that I had when I was 17. To my surprise, the self-portraits that I would later pursue through photography also have significance as forms imbued with emotion, and the subject of these photographs could never have been anyone but myself.