Book dossier

Michiko Kon

by Michiko Kon, Ryū Murakami, Toshiharau Ito

Michiko Kon: Still Lifes presents this unique artist's photographs of the impossible objects she has created in her studio. These objects are assembled from fish, flesh, and fowl with a Surrealist sensibility reminiscent of the works of Man Ray and Meret Oppenheim. Michiko Kon's photography deftly makes a permanent record of subjects that only exist temporarily: a garter belt fashioned from fish; a pair of melons covered with octopus tentacles; and a boot made of shrimp, among many other non-delectables. Michiko Kon takes the classic tradition of the still-life photograph and gives it new life through the reanimation of object parts and body parts in new forms. Kon writes: "A fish with legs, a vacuum cleaner turned into an animal, a light bulb turned into a pear, a remote device turned into a living creature...." It is this exchange of the inanimate with the animate that imbues the stillness of her photography with the dynamism of the balance between life and death, the fashionable and the commonplace, being awake and dreaming.