Seen: 理想の猫じゃない Imperfect Cat
Who: インベカヲリ★ Kawori Inbei
Where: 神保町画廊 Jimbocho Garo, Jimbocho
When: March 8 - 24, 2019
I’ve enjoyed sharing thoughts on Kawori Inbei’s exhibitions here for years now- and it was great to get to see her and her newest exhibition, Imperfect Cat, in Jimbocho this afternoon. Inbei’s work is consistent in its subject matter- the lives and identities of young Japanese women. Subjects whom all replied on their own accord to her request for models. The collaborative portraits are both beautiful and often slightly odd. In the book they are accompanied with at times brutally honest text written by the women in the pictures. At her 2018 Nikon Salon show she told me that several of the older men who visited said that the the photographs and the text were frightening.
Unlike the digital photographs she exhibited in the Nikon Salon the pictures which comprise Imperfect Cat were all shot on color film through her Pentax 67 with a standard 105mm lens.
An extensive selection of her (often nsfw) photography can be seen on her website. Copies of her photobooks are available on Shashasha here.