'Rock My Sock' Group Visits Kula Gallery for Sakiko Nomura's "Requiem"

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　                   

Kula Gallery: Nomura Sakiko

~Requiem~

Kula Gallery is a small gallery located in a multi-tenant building in Shinjuku, Tokyo. When we visited there on the last day of the show, we found no other audience except us. We expected the gallery to be in a more well-known place, but instead we found the gallery on the fourth floor of an old multi-tenant building where it was located behind the main streets of Shinjuku. Like most other galleries, Kula Gallery had walls emphasized with white which centered its attention to the photography of the artist.

Nomura Sakiko is a prominent for taking pictures of naked man living in the light and the dark. The atmosphere of her photography is unique and mysterious which makes it attract the attentions of the audience. Her style, from the beginning of her history of photography to the newest, is known to be consistent; the content of her photography and the uniqueness have never changed.  While looking at her photography at the gallery show, I felt that her photography was metaphor to her life. It seemed as if she was struggling to find the light in the world and believed that we all existed between the crenel of the light and dark.

Her show “Requiem” was dedicated to a model who had passed away at the age of 43 in the winter of 2010. To Nomura, the model was her partner through the beginning of her  works to the recent. In memory of him, Nomura showed the photographies that portrayed the life of the man and scenarios of after his death. There were photographies of the man in nude, his hospital room, scenery outside of his room, and his funeral. There were no words, but from all that were shown had the atmosphere of sorrow and despair as if Nomura is telling us the significance of the model's existence in her life. Since most of Nomura's works consist of nudity, the first glance we take at her photography could be shocking and surprising, but when you take the time to look at it closely, we could feel no sense of lust but only of purity. When I examined her pictures, it was as if I was peeking through a hole to take a look at Nomura's world; a world that not everyone has the sense of viewing. It had a very unique atmosphere where it portrayed what kind of a person Nomura Sakiko is.

Nomura Sakiko has published many photography books in which most of the photography is in monochrome. Once in an interview with a photography magazine, Nomura said that most of her photography is monochrome because she feels that color could get in the way of her perception of things. She also stated that she does not have a particular rule she follows in the process of taking photography; she just follows her sense and timing. Nomura believes that photography is more than what our imagination and determination leads us to. She claims that her style of photography always comes naturally and never with preparation. 

A second member writes: 

Our visit to the Kula Gallery: Ten minutes and a bit through some narrow roads from Shinjuku station, we we were finally there in front of a cream colored building. Going up the stairs to the 4^th floor, we found out that the building was rather darker than usual and dusty in the corners, which made the building itself seem surreal. However, the darkness was completely gone when we arrived to the gallery. The gallery rather seemed futuristic because of the ceiling, the floor, and the walls all colored in white.

The gallery we went to was called Kula Gallery, presenting the pictures of Sakiko Nomura. The pictures that were displayed were mostly black and white, having high contrast on most of them, with a lot of light and shadows in play with the subject of the photograph. The subjects of the photos were mostly male models, particularly one guy who seemed somehow weak and fragile. This man and his life turn out to be the main theme of her collection in this gallery. He was a model she knew very well and took pictures of who died at the age of 42. He has been one of Sakiko's favorite models. Sakiko followed his life from his childhood to the last days of his life even to the funeral. Though the pictures weren't as shocking as it sounds, I felt a lot of sadness in him, and also from the photographer. It was like she wanted to keep him in the photo and make him stay alive in there. It started with a small boy lying in bed half naked, continued with a grown-up male lying in bed just like the first picture. At the end of it, there was a picture of a Christian funeral, a hospital bed, and a little plant on the windowsill, (as a comparison with the models life?), in his hospital room. The pictures there surely gave an unique impact on all of us.

Most of the pictures in her book were in color, with a couple of black and white pictures, and her style was a little different from what she exhibited in Kula Gallery. It is probably because of the theme being the male models death, and that being a little serious than her usual artwork. Sadly, we were not able to meet the photographer or to get details about the picture from the staff there but were able to read an article explaining her photos which really helped. Overall, our visit to the gallery was a very interesting in aspects of the collection theme, the photographers perspective, and her style.

 And this member writes:  

The gallery was white and simple and there were two rooms of photos. Each wall had only one row of photo so there weren't many, but they had some message on each photo. Most of the photos were black and white.

The concept was the man`s life who was her model and died recently. Every single photo had sadness: how the man looks, or how the photographer take the places. And more, the photos were black and white and so we see more sadness there.

There were two photos which I can`t forget about: First one is the man sitting on the chair and looking outside from the window. The photo is quite dark and we cannot really see many details. The man`s back is so skinny and he is naked. For me It seemed he is thinking about death and he realized he is actually dying, so he wants to see outside before he has no chance to see the view again. The second one is the dog`s photo. The dog is a Jack Russell Terrier, and he looked so sad. We don’t know actually know if he is sad and we cannot read the dogs emotions, but the dog which in the photo, he looked so sad and worried.

 The photos all have sadness, however we don’t feel bad about it or shouldn't see it. They had some warmness as well. if you see the photos you will have the feeling which you only can have when you see something good and you don’t know how to explain, but you know that it was good and worth to see it.