the amana collection
Exhibit 02: Asako Narahashi, Rika Noguchi, Tomoko Yoneda

On Seeing:

A photograph does not show some thing. Rather it represents the condition of the photographer’s mind. Oftentimes that condition is the product of a sustained, regular practice of looking repeatedly. So, when a photographer is able to not only demonstrate an awareness of that condition but also to communicate it, we’ve been given an opportunity to perceive the world differently.

In her on-going series “Between Visible and Invisible,” Tomoko Yoneda positions her Hasselblad camera to peer through the spectacles of several well-known figures, viewing materials that the writer himself would have seen. In a way, Yoneda provides a window within a window, which is a metaphor for photography itself.

Similarly, Rika Noguchi has often has used the relationship between seeing and the camera as a subject for her photography. Here, with two prints from the series “H-IIA・F4” two rockets rise up into the stratosphere; diminished in size, the rockets almost vanish from view. Here too, we find perspective, scale, and the limits of perception are in operation.
In Asako Narahashi’s prints from the series “Half Asleep Half Awake in the Water”, the visual plane is bisected with an unfixed horizon line. As the camera’s position undulates in and out of the water, the camera points back toward terra firma, emphasizing destabilization. Not only are Narahashi’s images means to point toward photography itself, they reveal the condition of the photographer’s mind.

While it is a truism that a photographer’s work is to use an apparatus capture a view, these photographers demonstrate that the human eye itself is a camera device. And in doing so, they reveal the interrelation between perception and the mind. Does the apparatus define the limits of perception or does the mind? The elegance with which these photographs present such sophisticated thought is remarkable.

― Ivan Vartanian Director, the amana collection

【About the amana collection】
the amana collection represents the excellence of contemporary Japanese photography. Begun in 2011, the collection is comprised of approximately seven hundred exhibition prints thus far, representing a broad cross-section of approaches and methodologies.
the amana collection brings together the work of those photographers who question our established ways of thinking and seeing in order to clear the way for the new. the amana collection is committed to supporting the efforts of Japanese photographers by raising the awareness and understanding of their photography.