Misato Kuroda
“ He is …. ”
2009Grand Prize
ARTIST STATEMENT
He is ….
Digital cameras are popular, and now almost everyone has a digital camera.
It's a story you often hear, people go on holiday and see a beautiful scene and everyone gets immersed in the activity of pushing the shutter button.
They get excited and end up taking several nearly identical pictures.
But in the final days of their holiday the data card in the camera gets full and they can't take any more pictures.
And what do they do when that happens? They erase their pictures.
They've got several copies of the same scene, so they choose the best one and erase the rest. In the end, the best one remains, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's a benefit of digital photography. But I started to think, when you erase the data, that feeling of being immersed in the activity of pushing the shutter and the act of photographing itself is lost, and that made me feel quite sad.
I wanted to express the feeling of the special times spent with my boyfriend, so I made this collection of photos.
Entries form: Book, A3, 180 pages, inkjet prints
Selecting judge: Mika Ninagawa
The honesty of it draws you in. You get a sense of "Aw, she really loves him," rather than a sense that she's trying to take good photographs.
While she took a very personal thing, she generalized it so others could also experience the same feeling. I think one of the basic reasons for taking pictures comes from the desire to leave a record of happy moments.
Selecting judge(Honorable Mention): Nobuyoshi Araki
Her feelings are expressed to the fullest extent. Like the cover of a book, she's always taking photographs with her raw feelings. I like how there is a before and an after to each cut, and how she doesn't put the brakes on her affections. Normally if you try to take a picture like this it comes off as rather sappy, but these are very gentle, very nice. The size and construction too, it's a good book.
PROFILE
Misato Kuroda
Misato Kuroda resides in Mie Prefecture. She graduated from the Information Design Department at the Kyoto University of Art and Design in 2009 and completed a course at the Graduate School of Arts at Tokyo Polytechnic University in 2012. She currently works on and exhibits her photography in the Kanto area. Taking inspiration from her own experiences and using things close to her as motifs, she creates works that deal with gender and women's issues as well as human sentiments.
Publications
| 2021 | Rafu Meibi [Picturesque Nudes], a photo collection (Jimbocho Gallery) |
| 2020 | Love Letter, a photo collection (Seigensha Art Publishing) |
| 2019 | I am glad that she is there in front of the sea, a digital photo collection (Shogakukan) |
| 2019 | ISI Press Vol. 5, a zine (ISI Press) |
| 2015 | Utsukushiku Shitto Suru [Beautifully Jealous], a photo collection (Nippon Camera) |
| 2014 | HER, a collection of photo essays (Raichosha) |
| 2013 | Sawako: Musho no Ai [Sawako: Selfless Love], a photo collection (Seigensha Art Publishing) |
| 2011 | Sawako, a photo collection (LibroArte) |
2009Grand Prize