![]() This was perhaps something she inherited from her mother, who has worked as a quilt artist alongside her acting. And she had another powerful weapon in her arsenal: a sense for color that fed into her daring use of dazzling primaries. She had the confidence to use the directorial ability she had inherited from her father to communicate with and exert artistic control over her subjects, and quickly developed a talent for capturing fleeting moments in her pictures. ![]() Although she had the option of keeping her distance from the boom, she chose to embrace the movement and ride the wave of its popularity. Her favorite subjects were self-portraits (including nudes), shots of her family and friends, travel pictures, and indoor scenes. Much of Ninagawa’s earliest work fell squarely into the Girly Photo category. The refreshing new style for a while became one of the defining trends in Japanese photography. From among this new generation came artists like Nagashima Yurie and Hiromix, young women whose work had a distinctive brilliance that made it a fresh departure from most art photography that had come before. Technical innovations and the easy availablility of user-friendly compact cameras and color photocopiers made photography accessible to a wider range of people than ever before, and young women in particular started to use it as a medium for self-assertion and self-expression, taking vibrant images of the everyday world around them. From the early 1990s, the gender balance between male and female students in university photography departments and specialist photography schools shifted, with women students outnumbering men for the first time. Ninagawa’s debut came in the middle of the fashion for what were called “girly photos”: essentially, photography life by young women based on subjects taken from everyday life. (© mika ninagawa, Courtesy Tomio Koyama Gallery)ma Gallery That year, she published her first book of photos, titled 17 9 ’97.įrom the collection 17 9 ’97. In 1998 she won the Konica Photo Encouragement Award, and used the scholarship prize money to fund a series of travels during which she continued to develop her vision and personality as an artist. She started to submit her work to competitions, and came to wider prominence in 1996, when she won the first of a batch of prestigious awards for up-and-coming photographers, including the Grand Prize for Photography at the Hitotsuboten exhibition and a special commendation in the New Cosmos of Photography competition. She seems to have had at least some interest in photography from an early age: in interviews, she has recalled taking pictures of her Barbie dolls as a child, posing them amid the dramatic volcanic rocks of Onioshidashi on Mount Asama.īut her serious interest in photography started while she was in university. The “Girly Photo” Trend and What Came Nextīorn in 1972 in Higashikurume in westernTokyo, Ninagawa attended the private Tōhō Girls High School before studying graphic design at Tama Art University. In her younger years, she was often referred to as “Ninagawa Yukio’s daughter,” but today the situation is reversed, and it has become common for people to talk of him as “Ninagawa Mika’s father.” This reversal in public prominence is testimony to the profile she has built up through her work as a photographer and film director. From the beginning, she drew on the theatrical sensibility she had inherited from her parents. ![]() Besides the obvious advantages, this kind of upbringing can also bring huge pressure, but she used her background as a springboard to launch herself on her own career in photography. Growing up in a family where so many of her close relations had successful careers in the creative arts clearly had a profound impact on Ninagawa’s own life and career. There is no doubt that she grew up in an unusually rich creative home environment. Born to the internationally renowned theater director Ninagawa Yukio and the actress Mayama Tomoko, she also counts actresses Ninagawa Yuki and Ninagawa Miho, both cousins, among her extended family. Any discussion of Ninagawa Mika and her work must start with her background.
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