Artist Talk: Tokyo Rumando×Hideka Tonomura in conversation with Dr Simon Baker

Tokyo Rumando and Hideka Tonomura’s works depict two starkly contrasting types of reality. Rumando explores the reality of her own past inner life, while Tonomura radiates her own concept of reality on to the life surrounding her. The concept of duality (dualité) was central to the work of French philosopher and sociologist Edgar Morin. Juxtaposing the works of these two female photographers, this exhibition “Double Method” aims to use this concept to enhance the contrast between reality and fiction. The inner image of the soul can be perceived in all its strength when it is externally manifested through a strong libido. Like doppelgängers, these artworks printed on paper are physical manifestations of the souls of the artists, and they blur the borders between the objective existence of the print and the inner souls of these photographers.

Hideka Tonomura’s mama love series is an intimate portrait of the photographer’s mother’s love life, split into two distinct halves. The first part of the series, shot in black and white, shows Tonomura’s mother in bed with a lover. Tonomura obscures the lover’s face, thus focussing the viewer’s attention on that of her mother. These photographs were difficult to take, and although there are elements of pain and complicity involved, the series is intended as a statement of affection. In the second half, shot in colour, the viewer sees Tonomura’s mother counting money for a loan that needed to be repaid. The whole series is an intense exploration of the photographer’s immediate family, and photographer Nobuyoshi Araki wrote for the sleeve of the resulting photobook that it is “playing around with darkness.”

Tokyo Rumando explores the relationship between photography and performance, and engages with both provocative and light topics, such as gender exploration, identity, and humour. “Rest 3000~, Stay 5000~” is a series of images taken in Japanese love hotels that combine elements of reality and fiction: the artist’s body language in the various rooms hints at the presence of a customer or a lover, deliberately blurring the outlines of reality, and the eye is deceived by the realism of the quasi-documentary style and the artificiality of the self-portrait, suggested by the occasional appearance of the remote shutter release. In “Orphee”, the artist dresses and undresses in front of a giant round mirror, facing all the memories, projections, fears and desires reflected in its surface. “selfpolaroids” includes photographs that Tokyo Rumando has taken throughout her creative career. For the artist, polaroids are at the same time a tool of her trade, a mode of self-expression and self-empowerment, and a medium for experimentation in the development of her art.

For this event, the artists were joined in conversation by Dr Simon Baker, Director of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris.

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