The 1990s were an important decade for reflecting on the role of women in Japanese photography. This was the time when Hiromix, Mika Ninagawa and Yurie Nagashima emerged as representatives of a movement that contributed to the visibility of women photographers in Japan. Nonetheless, the process did not unfold without controversy1 in a country where women had been relegated to the role of visual objects to be captured by the male photographer’s gaze.
In that same decade Sakiko Nomura emerged unassumingly. Working with both discretion and dedication, at a safe and persistent rhythm, after thirty years Nomura became one of the most respected figures of Japanese photography. The fact that she was not associated with the female movement at the beginning of her career led her to escape the label of ‘woman photographer’. In the end this might have helped her achieve that status more unequivocally, compared to the group of female photographers mentioned earlier.
Ironically, the name that has been associated with Nomura throughout all these years represents the exact opposite. We are talking about Nobuyoshi Araki, who emerges as one of the most emblematic practitioners of a certain male gaze towards women, decisively informed by desire and an openness to imagination. Sakiko Nomura was a photography student when she became Araki’s assistant in 1991. She worked with him for many years.
This story is repeated in almost all the texts about Sakiko Nomura, which might be due to its anecdotal character, or to rhetorical questions. On the one hand, a biographical account associates Nomura with Araki, who is perhaps the Japanese photographer most celebrated in the West. On the other hand, it makes it possible to present Nomura’s work as a kind of antithesis to the master’s work. If the naked female body is at the centre of Araki’s work, the naked male body is at the centre of Nomura’s.
Choosing male nudity as a pivotal element of her photographic work, Nomura subverted Japanese photographic tradition – the entire world’s, really –, according to which men observe women. This fact could have made her an advocate for the women’s cause in the arts. However, Nomura evaded that role. In Marc Feustel’s words, she rejected ‘interpretations of the work as a social commentary on gender stereotypes’.2 Although it was not a deliberate gesture, it is obvious that its social and political power is substantial and cannot be overlooked, placing Nomura within a select group of female photographers – alongside Momo Okabe and Mayumi Hosokura – who, somewhat explicitly, question the rigid structures and power relations that rule Japanese society, favouring a non-conventional representation of the male body.
Despite the sociopolitical dimension of these photographers’ work, what makes them unique and truly interesting is the fact that their strength is not limited to their discourse. Michiko Kasahara raised that point in a text for the catalogue of the first large exhibition of Sakiko Nomura’s work in the West, at MAPFRE, in Madrid: ‘I saw her books again and I came to the conclusion that her work, its progression and the books themselves, do not require an explanation. In fact, they reject it, the same way they reject classification, since they are just trying to be “photography”’.3
To summarise: the sociopolitical aspect of Sakiko Nomura’s work is unquestionable and important, but it results from the singularity of her gaze. As a creator, her intention is not to claim a ‘female gaze’, but to develop her own personal gaze by ‘simply taking photos’. In an interview with Lena Fritsch, Nomura explains that her interest in photography is intimately related to her interest in the real: ‘I take photographs […] of everything that the world provides me with […]. I think reality gives us so many interesting motifs – that is why I do photography. Not painting or literature, but photography.’4
After the sociopolitical explanations have been put aside what remains is a question that has not been answered adequately by critics: what kind of photographer is Sakiko Nomura? ‘¿Qué clase de artista es Sakiko Nomura?’ is the title of Kasahara’s essay, which ends, not unironically, with the author doubting her ability to answer that question: ‘What kind of artist is Sakiko Nomura? It is possible that those who read my text are dissatisfied. […] [The] only thing I am certain of is that Nomura’s interest is always directed at photography and that it will always try to convey things that only photography makes possible.’5
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