The Japanese photographer Ishiuchi Miyako’s relationship to photography began with the smell of the darkroom. She was interested in the things you can’t see, and wanted to photograph time, which has neither a smell nor a form. Working with images in the dark, where the smells came forward while the visual element disappeared, must then have seemed like the perfect contradiction.
The smells I imagine when looking at her works are the scent of long-expired lipsticks, shaped by the mouth to which they were applied, or crumbled with age; the odours that linger in the underwear drawer in an old lady’s home; semi-transparent stockings, lace night dresses, the remains of forgotten mothballs, and the smoke from an atomic bomb left in the fringes of a frayed dress with a pattern of pale flowers and burnt patches.
Eye as a Camera, Objektiv Press (2024)
2.
Camera Roll:
- A steel bench on a train platform glowing in the early afternoon sunset.
- Reflections of the room in a wall of red tiles.
- A spoon and cake crumbs on a page of notes I used as a plate.
- C and A smoking outside the print shop.
- Leopard-print seats through a car window.
- Printed pages.
- Golden plastic shoes.