Signed, New, Recommended

My Journey III. 1993-2022

Tamiko NISHIMURA

“My Journey III” is the third and final chapter in Tamiko Nishimura’s “My Journey” series.

Since her early days as a photography student capturing the works of the Jokyo Gekijo theater group, Nishimura has continued to see, confront and photograph people, scenes and objects in the world with her own emphatic, fascinating style. In “My Journey III”, Nishimura presents a series of black-and-white photographs taking during her journeys in and out of Japan between 1993 and 2022. In 2011, for example, one such journey took her to Prague, as she hunts the ghost of Josef Koudelka, one of her photographer idols.
Throughout the book, Nishimura weaves a deep and multilayered web of emotions, stories and impressions that lie decades and thousands of kilometers apart, driven by her relentless interest and compassion.

“I have a feeling that I am still en route.”
― from Tamiko Nishimura’s afterword (included in Japanese and in English translation)

-Book Size
222 × 257 mm
-Pages
156 pages, 128 images
-Binding
Softcover
-Publication Year
2022
-Language
English, Japanese

Artist Profile

Tamiko NISHIMURA

Born in 1948 in Tokyo, Nishimura graduated from Tokyo Photography College (current Tokyo Visual Arts) in 1969. Her graduation work was a photography series of Jōkyō Gekijo (Situation Theatre), forefront of the underground theatre movement led by Jūrō Kara. After her graduation, she met Daido Moriyama, Kōji Taki and Takuma Nakahira, three highly influential members of the Provoke movement. She assisted them in the darkroom from time to time up between 1969 and 1970, while she continued her personal shooting on her travels. Later in 1973, Nishimura made her debut through the first publication “Shikishima” published by Tokyo Photography College, showcasing her photographs taken from 1969 to 1972 on her journeys around Japan including Hokkaidō, Tōhoku, Hokuriku, Kantō, Kansai and Chūgoku regions. She also began to travel to Southeastern Asia and Europe in the 1980s. Nishimura’s language of expression is poetic, spiritual and deeply personal. Looking back on her career, Nishimura describes it as a sequence of journeys, and she continued photographing with her nomadic lifestyle. Her photography, revealing what is beyond a journey, is a manifold portrait of life wherever she encounters.

Her main publications are “Shikishima” (Tokyo Photography College, 1973. Reprinted by Zen Foto Gallery in 2014), “vent calmoso” (Sokyu-sha, 2005), “Existence 1968-69” (graficamag, 2011), “Eternal Chase” (graficamag, 2012), “Kittenish...” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2015), “My Journey” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2018) and “Voyage” (Zen Foto Gallery, 2019), “My Journey II. 1968–1989“ (Zen Foto Gallery, 2019), and “My Journey III. 1993-2022“ (Zen Foto Gallery, 2022). Her works are included in the collection of M+ museum (Hong Kong).

Gallery Exhibitions