Mika Ninagawa

[geri_chan]

I meant to post this awhile back when the show first aired, but I got busy and never got around to it until now. I watch NHK World online and on the local PBS station, and I happened to notice that a Direct Talk episode featured an interview with photographer Mika Ninagawa, daughter of the late Yukio Ninagawa, whom I've blogged about before (here, here, and here). Unfortunately, they don't seem to have a video online for viewing, but it was interesting enough that I wanted to recap it briefly.

NInagawa is famous for her photography books, which mainly feature flowers in bright, vibrant colors. She said it wasn't a deliberate choice and that she just wanted to take pictures of things that she likes, and she happens to like flowers. However, as the interview went on, it became clear that there is a central theme behind most of her works: she said that she is drawn to flowers (and her favorites are cherry blossoms) because of their ephemeral beauty.

Similarly, she was drawn to taking pictures of the exotic types of goldfish (like the kinds with the long, flowing fins and/or googly eyes and/or head shaped like a lion's mane) because of their fragility. She is fascinated by the way that humans have bred them over the years to produce traits that we find beautiful but have weakened the fish physically.

And recently she branched out away from flowers and did a book focusing on "light"--for example, the light of a sunrise, or a sea of hands bathed in light at a rock concert, reaching upwards as if in supplication, like a prayer. (Madonna reference unintended!) As with the flowers, she is drawn towards the ephemeral beauty that exists only in that moment.

She is also known for her celebrity portraits, often taken against backgrounds of bright, vibrant colors much like her flower photographs. She said that she photographs the men from a female gaze (in other words, makes them look sexy). OTOH, she said she doesn't want to make the women look flirty, but instead wants them to look powerful. What I found really interesting was when she said that sometimes there's tension between her and one of her subjects, and often that tension results in a great photo. Which made me think of Harudaki, since that was what originally got me interested in the elder Ninagawa, and how chemistry and tension between the actors can affect their performances. Or maybe a better analogy would be the tension between director and actor, such as Mochimune and Iwaki, and how their initially tense and adversarial relationship resulted in a great movie.

And finally, she talked about the difficulties of growing up in the shadow of her famous father. She said that from the time she was as young as five or six, she was aware of the way that people always talked about her father and because of that, was not really sure who she was herself. Photography helped her to find her own identity.

Ironically, of course, I was watching her interview precisely because I was interested in her father's work, but I found her to be a fascinating person in her own right.

Okay, so that "brief" recap turned out to be longer than I thought it would be, considering that the Direct Talk segments are only about 15 minutes long. But they really packed a lot of information into that short time! NHK reruns episodes from time to time, so if they ever air this one again, I'll try to post a heads-up here for anyone who's interested.