Welcome to Spring Term 2024!

 Welcome to Spring Term 2024!  Another term begins and in my tenth year, I wonder what I would like to discuss to kick off the term.  I thought as it is January and this is a time for self-reflection.  I would look at the self-portraits of Kimiko Yoshida.  Yoshida states; 'Transformation is, it seems to me, the ultimate value of the work.  Art has become a space of shifting metamorphosis. My self-portraits, or what go by that name, provide only the place and formula for the mutation.' (Yoshida K from; Bright S. Autofocus: 2010:P137)

Yoshida began taking self-portraits and these are all of the artists as a bride, the bride images span space and time from the mythological Babylonian bride to the cyborg bride. Yoshida was born in 1963 in Japan but as she felt oppressed as a woman she moved to France in 1995.  In Yoshido's images here her own identity is invisible, like Cindy Sherman, Kimiko Yoshida is every woman, in every time, she is an archetype and through her images she states; “I am basically saying that there is no such thing as a self-portrait. Each of these photographs is actually a ceremony of disappearance. It is not an emphasis of identity, but the opposite—an erasure of identity.”(Luntz, 2023)

Kimiko Yoshida (2006) Sakura Bride: Self Portrait

I enjoy this idea about disappearance and erasure as I used to think that it was important that the photograph was a remembrance and through the image there is immortality, however now I often think my disappearance and my absence are preferable.  Interestingly as a woman becomes a bride, her identity is in mortal danger, she is swallowed up, her name taken and she becomes 'Mrs' and the name of the husband.  In images, as Berger states; 'Men act and woman appear, Men look at women.  Women watch themselves being looked at.  This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves' (Berger J. 1973: P47) In images women become objects but now in this new world not just women, but it could be argued, everyone has become a false image of themselves, some believe that image to be true, but what true self-portrait is there now? 

Kimiko Yoshida (2004) Bride: Self Portrait

This is a question to contemplate and consider, as I embark on artistic work for this term...

References

Bright S. (2010) Autofocus: The Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography, Thames and Hudson, London

Berger J. (1973) Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books, London

Luntz, H. (2023) Kimiko Yoshida archives, Holden Luntz Gallery. Available at: https://www.holdenluntz.com/artists/kimiko-yoshida/ (Accessed: 07 January 2024).