Kyotographie 2024 – a photo essay

Spring in Kyoto ushers in cherry blossom season, but also marks the return of one of Asia’s largest photography festivals. Now in its 12th year, Kyotographie combines the past and present with its striking images and unique locations. The thirteen exhibitions are held in temples, galleries and traditional private homes across the Japanese city and showcase the work of national and international photographers.

The festival is loosely centered around a theme – and this year the directors, Lucille Reyboz and Yusuke Nakanishi, asked participants to focus on the word ‘source’ by delving into the essence of beginnings and the connection between creation and discovery.

The source is the initiator, the origin of all things. It is the creation of life, a place where conflict arises or freedom is achieved; it is the space in which something is found, born or created. It’s a struggle that Claudia Andujar and Yanomami shaman and leader Davi Kopenawa know all too well. The Yanomami Struggle is the first retrospective in Japan by the Brazilian artist and activist Andujar with the Yanomami people in Brazil.

It has been more than fifty years since she started photographing the Yanomami, the people of the Amazon rainforest near Brazil’s border with Venezuela, a first encounter that changed their lives. Andujar’s work is not only a showcase of her photographic talent, but with Kopenawa accompanying the exhibition to Japan for the first time, it is a platform to bring the message of the Yanomami to a wider Asian audience.

The first part of the exhibition features photographs taken by Andjuar in the 1970s, alongside artwork by the Yanomami people and words by Kopenawa. The second part tells the story of the constant violence that non-indigenous society inflicts on the Yanomami. The project is a platform through which the Yamomani people can be seen and protected from ongoing threats. The exhibition, curated by Thyago Nogueira of the Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo, is a smaller version of the exhibition that has been traveling around the world since 2018.

Moroccan artist Yassine Alaoui Ismaili (Yoriyas) shows new work created during his Kyotographie artist-in-residence program for young Africans. The images from the Japanese city can be seen next to his project Casablanca Not the Movie.

Yoriyas gave up his career as a breakdancer and took up photography as a means of self-expression. His project Casablanca Not the Movie documents the streets of the city where he lives with candid shots and complex compositions. His work, which combines performance and photography, encourages us to focus on the way we inhabit urban spaces. The clever use of the exhibition and Yoriyas’ experience with choreography force the viewer to view the work from unconventional angles. He says: “The camera frame is like a theater stage. The people in the frame are my dancers. By moving the camera, I choreograph my subjects without even realizing it. When my attention is caught by an interesting movement, I press the shutter button. My training has taught me to immediately understand space, movement, connection and story. I photograph the same way I choreograph.”

• The contrasts in Casablanca take many forms, including social, political, religious, and chromatic. Photo by Yoriyas

From Our Windows is a collaboration that brings together two important Japanese female photographers, both sharing aspects of their lives through photography, in a cross-generational dialogue. The exhibition is supported by Women in Motion, which spotlights the talent of women in the arts in an effort to achieve gender equality in the field. Rinko Kawauchi, an internationally acclaimed photographer, chose to exhibit with Tokuko Ushioda, who at the age of 83 continues to create vibrant new works. Kawauchi says of Ushioda, “I respect the fact that she has been active as a photographer since a time when it was difficult for women to advance in society, and that she is truly committed to the life unfolding before her. ” This exhibition features photographs taken by each of them of their families.

Kawauchi’s two oeuvres, Cui Cui and As It Is, focus on family life. The first series is a family album about the death of her grandfather and the second shows the three years after the birth of her child. Family, birth, death and everyday life run like a common thread through both oeuvres and help create an emotional experience that transcends generations.

Kawauchi says: “My works will be exhibited next to Ushioda. Each of the works from the two series is located in a room of the same size, next to each other. The works show the accumulation of time we have spent. They are a record of the days we spent with our families, and they are also the result of the confrontation with ourselves. We hope to share with visitors what we have seen through photography, what we have continued to do even though our generations are different, and enjoy the fact that we are now living in the same era.”

Ushioda’s first solo exhibition includes two series: the intimate My Husband and also Ice Box, a permanent observation of her and friends’ refrigerators. Ushioda says: “I worked on that series [Ice Box] for about twenty years or so. As with collecting insects, I took photos here and there of refrigerators in houses and in my own home, which ultimately culminated in this body of work.”

James Mollison’s ongoing project Where Children Sleep is on display at the Kyoto Art Center with a clever exhibition that turns every photo into its own bedroom.

Featuring 35 children from 28 countries, the project encourages viewers to think about poverty, wealth, the climate crisis, gun violence, education, gender issues and refugee crises. Mollison says: “From the beginning I wanted to think not about needy children in the developing world, but about something more inclusive, about children from all kinds of situations.” Covering everything from a caravan in Kentucky during an opioid crisis and a football fan’s bedroom in Yokohama, Japan, to a teepee in Mongolia, the project offers a compelling look at diverse lives.

Phosphor, Art & Fashion (1990-2023) is the first major retrospective exhibition dedicated to the Dutch artist Viviane Sassen. It covers 30 years of work, including never-before-seen photographs, and combines these with video installations, paintings and collages that show her preference for ambiguity and drama in a distinctive language of her own.

The exhibition opens with self-portraits made during Sassen’s time as a model. “I wanted to regain control over my own body. With a man behind the camera there is always a kind of tension, which is often about eroticism, but usually about power,” she says. Sassen lived in Kenya as a child and the series produced there and in South Africa are dreamy, daring and enigmatic. She describes this period as her “years of magical thinking”. The exhibition’s staging in an old newspaper printing press contrasts with the light, shadows and bold, clashing colors of her work. The lack of natural light enhances the flamboyant tones of the elaborately composed fashion work.

• Dior Magazine (2021) and Milk, from the Lexicon series, 2006. Photos by Viviane Sassen and Stevenson

The source and inspiration for Kyotographie can be traced back to Lucien Clergue, the founder of Les Rencontres d’Arles, the first international photography festival, which took place in 1969. Arles, where Clergue grew up and lived all his life, was a canvas for his photography work in the fifties. Shortly after World War II, many Roma were liberated from the internment camps and came to Arles, where Clergue built a close bond with the community. Gypsy Tempo reveals the daily lives of these families: their nomadic lifestyle, the role of religion and how music and dance are used to tell stories.

During this time, Clergue discovered the gypsy guitarist Manitas de Plata and his friend José Reyes, and subsequently helped him become famous. Manitas became a famous musician in the 1960s who toured the world, including Japan, with Clergue.

Kyotographie 2024 was launched alongside its sister festival Kyotophonie, an international music event, with performances by Los Graciosos, a band from Catalonia playing contemporary gypsy music. Meanwhile, the sounds of De Plata can be heard by viewers of Clergue’s exhibition.

• The magic circle, Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, 1958, by Lucien Clergue.

Kyotographie 2023 runs until May 12 at locations in Kyoto, Japan.