Inhabiting Light – Dialogue on the Edge of the Everyday World
Masatake Shinohara
Rinko Kawauchi
$29.40 (+tax)
In stock
To be released in the middle of April 2025
This publication is structured as a dialogue of texts and photographs. Rinko Kawauchi replies with photographs to the text by the philosopher Masatake Shinohara, which is again responded to by Shinohara’s words. Upon writing, Shinohara says that he repeatedly recalled Kawauchi’s words: “what is important about a photo is the way one takes it, rather than what one takes.”
“In reality, we experience something. When we experience that something, it is important to ask how it came into existence in this world. (…) As I continued the exchange with Kawauchi, I came to the realization that what was at stake in the responses to the photographs was the act of directing the movements of thought towards the dimension in which things happen: that is, the place from which reality emerges. Such a dimension lies hidden behind the surface of the everyday world in which we ordinarily live.” – from the afterward. There, you will see the different sensations and emotions surfacing from the photographs, and the line of thought unfolding through such manifestations are given life as words. The text and photography interrelate to explore the depths of “light” as a subject.
What does it mean to imagine the place where we are? This entails, first of all, an awareness of the fact that we are located “somewhere.” That is, to exist means to live within a certain site, but where we are is “somewhere.” And what if we humans happen to exist within the vastness of our natural surroundings? Even though the place where we are is a stable, artificial human construction, it is nothing more than an impermanent domain, adrift on the surface of so-called nature.
Masatake Shinohara（from the text in this book）
Text: Masatake Shinohara
Photo: Rinko Kawauchi
Size: 252 x 180 mm / Hard Cover / 136P
Design: Yuri Suyama, Minami Ogahara
Languages: Japanese / English
Price: 4,200 yen
Publisher: torch press
ISBN：978-4-907562-55-7 C0072
Year: 2025
Masatake Shinohara
Born in Kanagawa, 1975 and is currently based in Kyoto. With a primary focus on contemporary philosophy, environmental humanities, architecture, and art, Masatake Shinohara is questioning the dimension of human existence and writing about it. What is at stake is the topics such as the relationship between human artifice and nature, the human condition within the fragility of the contemporary world. His major writings include Fukususei no Ecology (Ecology of multiplicity). Tokyo: Ibunsha, 2016., Jinshinsei no Tetsugaku (Philosophy in the Anthropocene). Kyoto: Jimbun Shoin, 2018., and Ningen igo no Tetsugaku (Philosophy after Human). Tokyo: Kodansha, 2020. He has also done a translation of A New Philosophy of Society (2015) by Manuel DeLanda, Humankind (2016) by Timothy Morton, and ONE PLANET, MANY WORLDS: The Climate Parallax (2024) by Dipesh Chakrabarty.
Rinko Kawauchi
Born 1972 in Shiga Prefecture, she won the 27th Ihei Kimura Photography Award in 2002 for her two books Utatane and Fireworks. Other books include AILA (2005), the eyes, the ears, and Cui Cui (both 2005), Illuminance (2011, revised edition 2021), and Ametsuchi (2013). Photography) in 2009, the 25th Infinity Award in the Arts category organised by ICP (International Center of Photography) in 2013, the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists (2012) in 2013, and the Sony World Photography Award for Special Merit in 2023. Major solo exhibitions include ‘AILA + Cui Cui + the eyes, the ears,’ Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris (2005); ‘Illuminance Ametsuchi: Seeing Shadows’ (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography) (2012); ‘The river accepted me’ (Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto) (2016); ‘Rinko Kawauchi’ (2022-2023); M/E On the Sphere: an Infinite Series’ (Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Shiga Museum of Art) and many others. Recent publications include the photographic collections Yamanami and Here and Now (co-authored with Shuntaro Tanikawa). Her solo exhibition ‘M/E a faraway shining star, twinkling in hand’ is currently touring the world at Fotografiska in various countries.
