Photographer Rinko Kawauchi: 'A tribute to mother earth'

For Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi (born in 1972), everything is harmoniously interconnected.

Two seemingly unrelated subjects belong together after all. In the series M/E, a tribute to “Mother Earth”, she combines photographs from a trip to Iceland in 2019 with photographs of everyday life in Japan. It wasn’t initially intended, but the COVID-19 pandemic kept Kawauchi confined to her home, and she was unable to complete her series on the wild nature of Iceland.

The contrast between those two unrelated worlds makes M/E stronger. A river winding its way through the volcanic Icelandic landscape sits beside a photograph of a browning sliced apple on a blue plate. This juxtaposition of the large and the small, the immense and the intimate, has been a recurring theme throughout Kawauchi’s career, which she translates into a poetic and personal visual language. In a soft colour palette, she photographs a world where light plays a leading role: the sun caressing a hand, fireworks illuminating the sky, or glass refracting light into rainbow colours.

The same philosophy permeates Kawauchi’s images: “Every small being is part of a larger whole.” You can also read the title of Kawauchi’s new exhibition at Meessen contemporary art gallery another way: the letter combination “M/E” then stands for “me” and thus refers to the connection between the small individual and the great “Mother Earth”.