Gift

Terri Weifenbach creates dreamlike sceneries by photographing nature in her neighborhood. Rinko Kawauchi is known internationally as one of the leading photographers in today’s Japan. Back in 2011, when the two female photographers realized that they both happened to own each other’s book, they casually started to exchange emails. It soon evolved into an exchange of photographic images, which are presented in the exhibition “Gift.”

By sending image in reaction to the other’s image, and by repeating such correspondences, the photographs began to create a line of narrative; in response to Weifenbach’s image of water surface, Kawauchi emails an image of a water drop on tip of a leaf: when Weifenbach sends her an image of grass, Kawauchi responds with an image showing silky hair of a child. Such correspondences continued, creating intimate conversation between the two women. The idea of sequencing images as such is also an important process for Kawauchi when she is editing a photography book.

Like a gift, the photographs encapsulate thoughts for the other. Through the exchange they share a moment in a passing season, or they remember the moon which both of them witnessed on the same night. Like that, two women living in two faraway cities as Tokyo and Washington D.C. kept passionately exchanging photographs. The narrative woven through their photographic conversation will invite us to a lyrical world of their imagery.