In Japan, where photography is traditionally a male-dominated field, Ishiuchi Miyako, 77, is one of the few women to have accumulated international success and awards for forty-five years, paving the way for many younger colleagues. From the American occupation to the remains of Hiroshima, via the personal effects of her deceased mother or Frida Kahlo, she explores the passage of time and history. Exhibited this summer at the Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles, she received the Women in Motion prize from the Kering group.
I wouldn’t have gotten here if…
… If I had not discovered the exhilaration that comes with the darkroom and the manual development of photos. It is something absolutely astonishing. An erotic, almost sexual pleasure. The smell of the chemical product, the almost complete darkness and the little red lamp… We sometimes speak of bad tripbut, for me, a session in the darkroom is an opportunity for a good trip. A journey into the unknown. An immense freedom. A gigantic field of possibilities.
Did this revelation reorient your life?
Yes. I had never thought about photography before. It didn’t interest me. I started by going to art school thinking I would do design, which was a mistake. Then I switched to weaving, which turned out to be boring. I was looking, in vain, for a means of expression. And then a friend left me a piece of equipment for developing and printing photographs. I wanted to try it. It was THE encounter with photography. I was about 26, which is very late to dive into a discipline. I was self-taught, but I had never experienced such a feeling of freedom.
And what did you urgently want to photograph?
Yokosuka, the city I lived in from the age of 6 to 19, south of Tokyo, and which I always hated. It housed an American base that heavily conditioned the city’s atmosphere. Which poisoned it, made it sulfurous and downright unbreathable. My parents, my younger brother and I lived in a tiny apartment in a poor and badly frequented neighborhood. There were thefts, murders, humiliations. Believe me, I quickly learned the turpitudes and complexity of human beings! But what never ceased to surprise me was that there were borders within the city. And streets where girls were forbidden to enter.
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Why? What were the risks?
Of being raped, of course! What else? I was little, I didn’t know what it meant, but I sensed danger. Sexual crimes were a daily occurrence in this occupied city. It was well known that the Americans were only looking for one thing, to satisfy their virile desires. It was palpable on every street corner. Before the war, Yokosuka had been a garrison town and had housed Japanese naval bases. So there was already this culture of brothels, prostitution and debauchery districts. The post-war period only reinforced this sexual tension. The natives of the city were used to it, but I, who had been born in the countryside and had arrived there at the age of 6, felt a real shock and spontaneously took a dislike to it. On my way to school, I walked along the red light districtthe brothel area, and felt a great unease. This city shaped my psychological landscape. It was the city that made me realize, very early on, that I was a woman.
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