Tomoko Sawada

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Tomoko Sawada ( Japanese 澤 田 知 子 , Sawada Tomoko ; * 1977 in Kobe , Hyōgo Prefecture ) is a Japanese photographer .

life and work

Tomoko Sawada was born in Kobe in 1977 and graduated from the Seian Zōkei Daigaku (English: Seian University of Art and Design ) in 2003 . Sawada's works are mainly devoted to depicting the roles of women in (Japanese) society and the contradiction between tradition and modernity . The subject of her photography is always herself, both in portraits and scenes. By changing the surroundings, hairstyles and costumes, she reveals the codes of “normality” and “difference” and thematizes the relationship between appearance and reality. As an executive photographer, she increasingly takes a back seat and is responsible for planning and arranging the recordings, which are then carried out by an assistant according to her specifications.

Sawada got into portrait photography through a compulsory course as part of her undergraduate studies and found that masks and costumes helped her shed the inferiority complex about her appearance. Based on Andy Warhol's machine shots, her photo series ID-400 was created in 1999 : 400 different self-portraits from the photo machine of a gas station, in which she shows the versatility of female forms of expression and lifestyles. After the end of the recordings, Sawada shaved his bald head and visited the exhibition without any make-up, mostly without being recognized. In Sawada's themed exhibition at the Zabriskie Gallery in New York, these images were juxtaposed with the images from the Oimai series , which is dedicated to depicting the Omiai tradition and in which firmly established, formal role models appear.

In her third cycle, Costume , Sawada also used medium format cameras for the first time , thus expanding the display options. While she and her changes always remain in focus with the help of strongly formative uniforms and costumes, the surrounding context becomes blurred. In School Days , she photographed herself as a fictional final class of a girls' school, in which all pupils are characterized by uniformity despite individual signs of individuality . In the Decoration series , she presents herself in various forms of “ Gothic Lolitas ”, as they are particularly known in the Harajuku district of Tokyo , where they present themselves in costumes every week at the Takeshita Dori.

Sawada's works are now part of the collections of the International Center of Photography , the Brooklyn Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art .

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1999 Clean Sisters Gallery, Osaka
  • 2001 The Third Gallery Aya, Osaka
  • 2002 gallery p, Brussels
  • 2002: The Self , Photoespana, Madrid, 2002 (group exhibition)
  • 2003: Two Photographic Series , Zabriskie Gallery, New York, 2003
  • 2004: About Face: Photography and the Death of the Portrait , Hayward Gallery , London (group exhibition)
  • 2004: Costumes , Zabriskie Gallery, New York
  • 2005: School Days , Imabashi, Osaka
  • 2005: Out of the Ordinary / Extraordinary , Museum for East Asian Art, Berlin (group exhibition)
  • 2006: Desire to Mimic , Museum of Applied Arts , Vienna
  • 2008: Decoration , Espai 13, Fundació Joan Miró , Barcelona
  • 2008: Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan , International Center of Photography (group exhibition)

Awards

Illustrated books

  • Tomoko Sawada: ID400: Relation Between Inside and Outside. Seigensha Art Publishing, 2004 ( ISBN 4861520126 )
  • Tomoko Sawada & Gen Kobayashi: Omiai . Seigensha Art Publishing, 2005 ( ISBN 4861520312 )
  • Tomoko Sawada & Gen Kobayashi: School Days . 青 幻 舎 , 2006 ( ISBN 4861520614 )
  • Tomoko Sawada: Masquerade . 赤 々 舎 , 2006 ( ISBN 4903545024 )

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Midori Matsui : Tomoko Sawada. Interview, June 2005
  2. ↑ a b c Detailed report on Sawada and her series from the Fundació Joan Miró
  3. ^ William A. Ewing & Nathalie Herschdorfer: Face: The New Photographic Portrait . S. 308ff, Thames & Hudson, 2006 ( ISBN 0500543216 )
  4. ↑ ID 400 ( Memento of the original from May 29, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at the International Museum of Women @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.imow.org
  5. ↑ a b Description of the exhibition ( Memento of the original from December 16, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. the Zabriskie Gallery @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zabriskiegallery.com
  6. ^ A b Edward Leffingwell: Sawada at Zabriskie . Art in America, April 1, 2005
  7. ↑ Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . ICP@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.icp.org  
  8. ^ Japanese Culture, in Vivid Color . New York Times, June 13, 2008
personal data
SURNAME Sawada, Tomoko
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 澤 田 知 子 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese photographer
DATE OF BIRTH 1977
PLACE OF BIRTH Kobe , Hyogo Prefecture