A trailblazing book chronicling the fundamental and consequential contributions of Japanese women photographers.

Mariko Takeuchi and Pauline Vermare discuss their collaborative project creating a restorative history of Japanese photography. Offering a critical and celebratory counterpoint to the invisibility of Japanese women photographers this expansive and rigorously researched book features 25 portfolios, multiple essays and an illustrated bibliography of photobooks by Japanese women photographers. This bold book embraces emotion, experimentation and provocation in myriad forms of beauty, humor, and deeply spirited connections. 

In this conversation, Mariko and Pauline discuss, among other things:

Pulling back layers of cultural understanding of being a women

Expanding vocabulary and objects of study

Womanhood, daughterhood and caregiving 

Physical involvement with the medium

Utilizing self-portraiture to reclaim agency over one's body

Making tangible that which is invisible

An outward expression of internal experience

Including the voices of photographers in the essays and text

Making and remaking meaning

Referenced in the episode:

Aperture

Rencontres d’Arles Exhibition I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese women Photographers From the 1950’s to Now

A World History of Women Photographers by Luce Lebart and Marie Robert

The Third Gallery Aya

PGI Gallery

Behind the Camera: Gender, Power, and Politics in the History of Japanese Photography / Created by Dr. Kelly McCormick and Carrie Cushman

What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843–1999 by Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich

Women Making Art: History, Subjectivity, Aesthetics by Marsha Meskimmon

Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed

World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2023

Self-Portraits by Yurie Nagashima

Ume-me - Todays Happening by Ume Kayo

The Memories of Others - Akihiko Okamura / Photo Museum Ireland