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Born in 1981 in Chiba (Japan).
Lives and works in Japan.
http://whitemanekicat.p1.bindsite.jp/
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« Misao et Fukumaru »
Miyoko Ihara is a young Japanese photographer, a graduate from the Nippon Photography Institute in the teaching of Kenji Higuchi. Recipient of several photography awards in Japan, and trained in press photography, Ihara has taken a very personal career path, particularly through this disarming first series which began twelve years ago and is based on the daily life of her grandmother, Misao, 87 years old, and her white cat, Fukumaru. As Miyoko Ihara explains, "one day in the garden shed, grandmother found a kitten whose eyes were a strange color. "Fuku" means happiness, "Maru" means loop. Grandmother called her cat Fukumaru, hoping it would bring good luck, and so make a "full circle". "
This work could be one of conventional banality or unnamed boredom, and yet it strangely avoids these pitfalls. It is not soporific for a penny, despite its simplicity; funny, offbeat and moving at the same time, it has an immediate effect on the beholder. The photography has an anti-dramatic role, with no effect, almost naked. The talent of the young photographer, although very real, fades completely, leaving all the space to what appears to be epiphanies, moments which are completely disengaged from context, a discursive point of view or even a metaphor.
Dignity and modesty are the rules if you want to touch emotion and crystallize it in the image. This requires entering the bubble of tenderness and evolving there, with the camera, without feeling like an intruder.
This unprecedented proximity which, nevertheless, does not break the strange and formidable couple of the old lady and her cat, constitutes the richness of this series which is anything but anecdotal, since it also shows old age and its mixture of wisdom, loneliness and generosity, as well as the unexpected beauty of a life far away from noise and frenzy - a life in the Japanese countryside.
AFL
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