Mikiko Hara “In the Blink of an Eye 1996-2009”

Miyako Yoshinaga

This event has ended.

MIYAKO YOSHINAGA presents its first solo exhibition of Mikiko Hara, her second New York exhibition since 2007. Based on Hara’s recent book Change, (her photographs with a short story by Stephen Dixon), the exhibition features twenty color photographs spanning over a decade from 1996 to 2009. The exhibition In the Blink of an Eye, organized in association with OSIRIS, Tokyo.

Hara’s square color snapshots involve no noticeable high drama. Her portraits - men and women, adults, adolescents, and children - are often alone hovering in the bay of everydayness: a schoolgirl at a train platform, mother and daughter asleep in a subway car, a middle-aged woman sternly looking off-camera. Although these scenes were shot in Tokyo and its suburbs, the settings and activities have an ambiguous quality, the images evoke emotion and mood through nuanced facial expressions and body language. Hara’s landscapes and still-lifes complement her portraits in an even more nonchalant style. They reflect the artist’s practice of accumulating fleeting moments in daily life. The 50-year-old Hara recently received Japan’s prestigious Ihei Kimura Photography Award for her rare ability to capture seemingly insignificant moments in life and let them speak for themselves with subtle but layered meaning.