M/E | Photography by Rinko Kawauchi

Visiting Iceland in 2019, Kawauchi witnessed geysers in which she felt the breath of the earth, glaciers that far exceed human time, and the womb-like interior of a dormant volcano, and felt a connection with this planet unlike anything she had felt before. With Iceland as the starting point, the experience continued, through the COVID-19 pandemic, to the nature around her home and to the winter land of Hokkaido. In 2022–2023 she held the large-scale solo exhibition M/E: On this sphere Endlessly interlinking, presenting part of the M/E series. M/E continues to be exhibited in countries around the world.

The title M/E takes the initials of "Mother" and "Earth"; read together it means "Mother Earth", and it also carries the meaning "Me". From this arises the inevitability that the existence of eternal nature and the small events of everyday life are not unrelated but inseparably connected. This latest work by Kawauchi returns to the origin — the connection between nature and humanity — beyond Ametsuchi and Halo, in which she gained her own vantage point while facing nature, and looks at the world anew in a turbulent age. With a design by Hans Gremmen, the photographs are printed on delicate, translucent thin paper, and the cloth binding is boldly foil-stamped, making it a book with an object-like presence. At the end is an essay by writer, photographer and art historian Teju Cole, written in a beautiful, letter-like style.

Publisher: torch press
Publication year: 2025
Pages: 216
Dimensions: 280 × 220 mm

Rinko Kawauchi / Japanese Photography / Everyday Life