Rinko Kawauchi: Imperfect Photographs

The oeuvre of contemporary Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi is characterized by an approach that gives precedence to process over product and combines conceptual art with vernacular traditions, making her pictures happily imperfect. Starting with Kawauchi’s transmedial concept of the image, often positioned between word and image and mainly materialized through photo books, I propose that Kawauchi’s photographs are imperfect thanks to her experimentation with technical mistakes, the vernacular subject-matter of everyday snapshots, seriality, sequencing, and format variation, elliptical visibility, the aesthetics of color, and a non-linear temporality. Imperfection, furthermore, emphasizes the materiality of the medium, and removes photography from the referent-centered documentary domain by way of aesthetic, rather than semiotic, significance. Imperfection also activates different modes of reception, emphasizing emotional involvement and participant viewing.