Ishiuchi Miyako: "Postwar Shadows"
By Billy Kung
Ishiuchi Miyako, one of the most significant Japanese female photographers to emerge from postwar Japan, currently has a major exhibition “Postwar Shadows” at Los Angeles’s J. Paul Getty Museum, which surveys nearly 40 years of her work.
Born in Kiryu, in 1947, the year of Japan’s “peace constitution,” Ishiuchi spent her formative years in Yokosuka, a Japanese city with a large American presence where a vital naval base was established in 1945. She took up photography as her means of personal expression in 1975 after studying textile design at Tama Art University and quitting school prior to graduation. Born as Fujikura Yōko, Ishiuchi assumed her mother’s maiden name as her professional identity.
