Iori Kinoshita
“ jamais-vu ”
1992Grand Prize
ARTIST STATEMENT
jamais-vu
Since I was small, I've loved animals — dogs, cats, rabbits. … We had lots of animals at home, and playing with them was one of my favorite things to do.
There was a small ranch near our house. Besides cattle, the farmer kept horses, sheep, and even goats. I often went there to play, because I loved being around the big animals. This is how I became so familiar with cows.
After getting my very first SLR camera, I went back the ranch for the first time in quite a while. As I focused in on the cows through my viewfinder, they began to pull all kinds of faces, sometimes laughing, sometimes nervous, and everything in between. “What in the world is happening?” I thought, with my heart pounding, as I snapped the shutter.
Here I was, intimately acquainted with cows; yet it felt like I was looking at entirely new creatures.
Selecting judge: Nobuyoshi Araki
It has a lot of impact. It seems like she thought, I want to photograph that! and just ran up to it and shot it. She is also displaying it in a straightforward manner, without sprucing it up to try to make it look better. In the end, it's the straightforward strategy that's strongest.
PROFILE
Iori Kinoshita
Born in 1971, Iori Kinoshita completed a course in graphic design at the Musashino Art University Junior College of Art and Design.
She received an Excellence Award at the 4th New Cosmos of Photography (selected by Nobuyoshi Araki) in 1992 and won the Grand Prize at the 1st New Cosmos of Photography Exhibition.
She held an exhibition entitled Correction at the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in 1998.
After being the tour photographer for the taiko group Gocoo and serving as the in-house wedding photographer at the Hotel Monterey Sendai, she opened her own studio, Hi Studio Mototanesha, in 2020.
Today, she remains involved in many areas of photography, including profile shots, family photos, and portraits, while making it her life's work to document the work operations of the Daichi no Saisei reforestation project.
1992Grand Prize