Japanese photographer Momo Okabe not only studies one of art history’s most important tropes—the bare female form—but in doing so investigates themes of gender dysphoria, identity and sexuality.
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Momo Okabe’s photographs depict the bare situation. Be it the sexual act, a wasteland, or the wake of a tsunami, the images Okabe presents speak directly, without device. There is a vitality to her practice, so much so that she notes that the process of constructing her book Bible saved her, nominated for Kassel Photobook Award 2014 by Manik Katyal. Responsiveness, but measured, aware, consummate, marks the event of Okabe’s photos. How does the body keen to a touch? When the water runs, how does the land react? What is love in an age of bodily dissociation, and how to bring our union with flesh back? Momo Okabe’s eye finds the necessary elements of uncertain, contingent existence, which she carries with care for others to see, knowing that a breath will scatter them.
Your work is extremely personal and the camera often seems to be an inseparable part of your own experiences. What does photography mean to you? What drew you to photography from such a young age?
When I was in junior high school, my father caused a problem at work and my family had to struggle with him seriously. He became mentally ill gradually from stress and my family started to function no longer. It was a tough time for me since I was still very young and I felt like I didn’t have any means to protect myself from society where people always tried to attack me as vicious enemies. However, I discovered that everything looked perfect and beautiful when I looked at the world though a camera. I felt as if I could accept and overcome the difficult experiences as far as I stayed in the world (observed through a camera). Because of photography and because of the action of taking a photo, I don’t give up living. I believe photography has helped me to cope with the difficult situations that happen in life.
You use color in your work in a very distinct and beautiful way. Your colors seem emotional and surreal at the same time. How did you come across this style of photographing?
A. For me, scenery/the world looks just that way. This color is made from my work in the darkroom at my house. I believe it is very important that I stay there alone and go through this time consuming process of making my work.
Your book Unseen/ Tsunami was a collaborative work with Kohey Kanno, where you both photographed your personal lives against the backdrop of the Fukoshima Tsunami. How did this collaboration come about and how did the tragedy of the tsunami affect how the work was created?
“Tsunami” was based on my personal experiences around the time the 3.11 tragedy occurred in Japan. When it happened, I was working in an office in Tokyo, and I went to my co-worker’s place for evacuation. We watched the TV program together and could not talk when we saw news from the
Sendai area where everything was burned. We were both confused and somehow awakened by this since we strongly realized that, without choice, we were now actually alive when many people were dying from this horrible disaster. I noticed that both terror and desire of life aroused from inside of me, and both feelings were equally powerful to me. A few days after the earthquake, I stayed home because of a risk of radiation outside, and I struggled with my uneasy feelings in my room. I truly wanted to destroy everything I had. I had physiologically stayed away from making “sex” in general and especially sexual contact with men and had a strong hated feeling about them for a long time. But I decided to sleep with my co-worker who went through the same experience together that day, and we both became accomplices and agreed on taking pictures of this act. I think when disaster happened, all Japanese people were very confused and we all became true to ourselves (as human beings). When I talked to Kanno-san, my old classmate from the college, we shared the same feelings. I don’t think we could report or document the tragedy of the disaster appropriately as photographers. All we could do is to show a feeling that we could not help from reality that we happened to still be alive. “Tsunami” was the work that I made to express my own personal desire as a person.
Your first US monograph Dildo dealt with your intense relationship with two lovers who were dealing with issues of gender identity. Your book was also a limited hand made edition. What was the process of putting your work into a book? How important was it for you that your book be hand made and only into a small set.
“Dildo” was like my private diary with my partners at that time and it was very intimate, although it was not open to the world. Since it was such a precious memory that I wanted to hold by myself as a secret, making “Dildo” by hand was important to me. It had to be hand-made, not machine-produced. If I had to make more than 50 copies, I would have been incredibly exhausted. 50 copies is as much affection as I could give to “Dildo”.
