Rinko Kawauchi

Artist lecture Tuesday, September 24, 2013 7PM
Timken Lecture Hall, California College of the Arts, San Francisco
Untitled, from the series Ametsuchi, 2012

Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi has gained international recognition for her nuanced, lushly colored images that offer closely observed fragments of everyday life. In 2001, Kawauchi launched her career with the simultaneous publication of three astonishing photobooks –Utatane, Hanabi and Hanako – firmly establishing herself as one of the most innovative newcomers to contemporary photography.

Kawauchi sees her work as a vast archive of images with never-ending potential. She photographs her everyday life, however it is through her selection and composition that she creates a magical feeling from her environment. Pictures of a baby being born, portraits of wounded or sick people, instantaneous and magical moments like fireworks, are all components of her visual poetry.

In her most recent body of work, Ametsuchi, Kawauchi unites images of distant constellations, tiny figures lost within landscapes, with photographs of a traditional controlled burn farming method (yakihata), in which the cycles of cultivation and recovery span decades and generations. Punctuating the series are images of Buddhist rituals and other religious ceremonies – a suggestion of other means by which humankind has traditionally attempted to transcend time and memory. Selected works from Ametsuchi were included in the exhibition, A Sense of Place, at Pier 24 Photography.

Kawauchi is recognized for masterful editing and sequencing of her images to generate a rich body of photobooks. Her monographs include Aila (2004), The Eyes, the Ear (2005) and Semear (2007). In 2010, Aperture published Illuminance, the first book of the artist’s work published outside of Japan; she was short-listed for the 2012 Deutsche Börse Prize for this publication.


Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program

Pier 24 Photography is pleased to present the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program in collaboration with California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Each year, the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program brings six photographers, writers, and curators to San Francisco to offer free and open lectures, and to work one-on-one with students at California College of the Arts.


Larry Sultan Photography Award


Jonathan Calm, Double Vision (Recording I), 2018

Jonathan Calm

Fall 2019 Residency
Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA

Click HERE for more information on the Larry Sultan Photography Award

Jonathan Calm is a visual artist who works in photography, video, installation, and performance. A central theme of his work is the relationship between photography and urban architecture, and the powerful role of images in the way architectural constructs shape the lives of individuals and communities.

In his most recent work, Calm explores the complex representation of African-American automobility from a historical and contemporary perspective, focusing and drawing on the importance and resonance of the Negro Motorist Green Book. Of this project, he explains, “the image of the infinite highway and the unbridled freedom to roam the land has always been considered a quintessential expression of the modern American spirit, but the black American experience of travel, which involves heightened subjectivity and exposure, has to this day proven a precarious privilege rather than an inalienable right.”

Calm’s art practice is international in scope and has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Frequency at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2005); Role Play at the Tate Britain (2006); Black Is, Black Ain’t at the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society (2008); Streetwise at the Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid (2008) and the Chelsea Art Museum (2011); deCordova Biennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (2013); and Rooted Movements at LMAKprojects in New York City (2014). Calm currently lives in Palo Alto, CA where he is a faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University.