Small Miracles 

Noguchi Rika

Noguchi Rika took up photography in 1992, while still a student. Since being awarded first prize in the photography category of the 3.3m Exhibition in 1995 and the New Cosmos of Photography competition in 1996, she has been considered one of Japan's foremost contemporary photographers, with her photographs and video works displayed in numerous exhibitions both nationally and overseas. Through series such as To Dive (1995), A Prime (1997 on), I Dreamt of Flying (2003) and The Sun (2005-08), her work has explored the relationship humans have with unknown realms such as underwater, high-altitude places, and outer space, while her work using pinhole cameras hones in on the very essence of the photographic medium.

From the outset of her career, Noguchi has exhibited major differences in her artistic leanings to those creators of her generation who emerged onto the scene at a similar time. From the nineties through to the noughties, against a backdrop of a wave of visual artists who were highlighting and problematizing social preconceptions and values, and the new form of photography emerging at the hands of young creators who captured their private lives in a diaristic fashion, Noguchi's adventurous approach guided by her pure curiosity, her affirmative stance towards the world, and her somewhat aloof perspective that could even be called cosmic made her immediately stand out. 

The title "Small Miracles"came out of the realization on Noguchi's behalf that she has been guided in her practice up to this point by the "miraculous power" at work in photography. This book looks at Noguchi's past series together with her more recent works and latest works alike from a 2022 perspective. ［...]

"Photographs are like the clues to a riddle. Creation is a journey. My works of art are my ethics. At the same time they are always about the coincidental reality that transcends everything. I will g on taking photos. For the riddles that make up 99% of my days." These words of Noguchi's upon being awarded first prize in the New Cosmos of Photography competition for To Dive have not dated at all, to the point that it's hard to believe they're 25 years old. Is that because Noguchi has kept on making work according to what interests her, without ever straying off course?

"I take pictures with a camera, but it feels more like the camera is letting me take them, or is guiding me, escorting me to all kinds of different worlds." Which will be the next door to be opened? Noguchi's journey, guided by the force of the small miracle that is photography, continues. Through those photographs and video works, we can sense that the world we live in lavishly overflowing, open and bright.

At the bottom of the sea or the end of the street, in the depths of the forest or the corner of kitchen, it's time to sense an unknown universe spreading out before let's there together. go So reads the invitation that Noguchi Rika's photographs and video works, guided by some miraculous power, quietly offer us.

"Rika-chan transcends the ways of humanity--she is just herself. She may have a headache, or be full, or be pregnant, but she still only looks at the things that she has to look at, and photographs the things she has to photograph. That way of being is, itself, her talent.

Those eyes that are neither male nor female, that simply stare. That particular way of looking at the world, exceptional in its fixity. Maybe what it most resembles is how the eyes of a boy in primary school look when he's in the process of building a perfect plastic model from a kit. Fitting the pieces in place without hurrying, not touching it when it's not yet dry, slowly and steadily, neither happily nor unhappily, with extraordinary concentration.

In that way, the beautiful things dotted throughout the world are simply reflected through those eyes in her photographs, and the laws of the cosmos and divine perspective are made to unfurl of their own accord.

"This world is fiction, but it's very beautiful fiction. I just reflect that, hoping to find out its secrets. But in order to do that, I need to make my eyes transparent. You need to become a certain way to do it, or else it doesn't work. That 'certain way' isn't something I can explain to anyone, though." When I look at Rika-chan's photos, that's what I feel she's saying to me."

Extracted from the text 

"The Mystery of Rika-chan"

Yoshimoto Banana

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Related Exhibiton

野口里佳「不思議な力」  会期：2022年10月7日（金）～2023年1月22日（日） 時間：10:00〜18:00（木・金は 20:00まで、入館は閉館30分前まで） 会場：東京都写真美術館2F （東京都目黒区三田 1-13-3 恵比寿ガーデンプレイス内） 休館日：毎週月曜日（月曜日が祝休日の場合は開館し、翌平日休館）、年末年始（12/29〜1/1、1/4） ※12/28、1/2、1/3は臨時開館

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Artist Information 

野口里佳 

さいたま市出身。那覇市在住。1992年より写真作品の制作を始め、展覧会を中心に作品を発表。現代美術の国際展にも数多く参加している。2002年、第52回芸術選奨文部科学大臣新人賞（美術部門）を受賞。国内での主な個展に「予感」(丸亀市猪熊弦一郎現代美術館、2001年)、「飛ぶ夢を見た」（原美術館、2004年）、「光は未来に届く」（IZU PHOTO MUSEUM、2011-2012年）など。作品は東京国立近代美術館、国立国際美術館、グッゲンハイム美術館、ポンピドゥ・センターなどに収蔵されている。

Noguchi Rika

Born in Saitama City in 1971, Lives and works in Naha City, Okinawa. she began taking photographs in 1992, developing a photographic practice focused around exhibitions. She has participated in a number of international art exhibitions. In 2002, she received the 52nd Minister of Education Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists.

Her major exhibitions inside Japan include a feeling of something happening (Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art [MIMOCA], 2001), I Dreamt of Flying (The Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004), and The light reaching the future (Izu Photo Museum, 2011-2012).
Her works are included in the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo, The National Museum of Art, Osaka, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Centre Georges-Pompidou.

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