Monday 6 July 2026
11:00am – 12:15pm (UK) / 7:00pm – 8:15pm (Japan)

Ishiuchi Miyako: Traces

Edited by Lena Fritsch and Yasufumi Nakamori | Thames & Hudson / Aperture

Online webinar, accessible remotely via Zoom

Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

Through subjects as diverse as old apartment blocks, human scars, kimono fabrics, personal belongings of the deceased and even her own water-damaged prints, Ishiuchi Miyako (b. 1947) captures time, atmosphere and memory in photographic form. Her work is at once deeply personal and evocative of the wider world hinted at by the traces recorded within the frame.

Since beginning her career in the 1970s, Ishiuchi has become one of Japan’s foremost photographers, leading the way for female practitioners in a scene that has traditionally been male dominated. Ishiuchi Miyako: Traces charts the course of her practice over fifty years and identifies themes that resurface throughout her work, including her relationship with place, the passage of time and the bodies and possessions of people, always with an emphasis on ephemerality. Three thematic sections – Town, Skin & Scars and Things Left Behind – present her major photographic series alongside lesser-known works and previously unpublished material. The book features essays by co-editors Lena Fritsch and Yasufumi Nakamori and by art historian Yuri Mitsuda. With extracts from Ishiuchi’s previous writings, an in-depth interview by Fritsch and a newly commissioned text by Ishiuchi herself, the artist’s voice is present throughout.

In this book launch, Lena Fritsch will introduce the book and discuss Ishiuchi’s work with the artist.

This event has been made possible thanks to Thames & Hudson and The Third Gallery Aya.

About the contributors

Dr Lena Fritsch

Dr Lena Fritsch is an independent curator and writer. A specialist in Japanese art and an experienced translator, Fritsch’s previous publications include the first English-language overview on post-war Japanese photography, Ravens & Red Lipstick: Japanese Photography since 1945 (Thames & Hudson, 2018/2024), and a monograph on Morimura Yasumasa (VDM, 2008). Her extensive curatorial career has seen her work at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Tate Modern, London; and Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie, Berlin. She has orchestrated over 15 exhibitions, including Tokyo: Art & Photography, Ashmolean Museum (2021), which garnered numerous 5-star reviews, and Ashmolean NOW: Pio Abad, which was nominated for the 2024 Turner Prize. In 2022, she co-curated the Roppongi Crossing Triennial of contemporary Japanese art at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. Fritsch has taught at the University of Oxford and University of London, and lectures regularly at museums. She holds a PhD in Art History from Bonn University, Germany and also studied at Keio University, Tokyo.

Ishiuchi Miyako

Ishiuchi Miyako was born in Gunma Prefecture and grew up in the city of Yokosuka in Kanagawa Prefecture. In 1979, she won the 4th Kimura Ihei Award for her work Apartment. In 2005, she represented Japan at the Venice Biennale with her series Mother, for which she photographed items inherited from her late mother. In 2007, she began her ongoing and internationally-renowned series ひろしま/hiroshima, for which she photographs belongings of atomic bomb victims. She received the Japanese Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon in 2013, the Hasselblad Award in 2014, the Asahi Prize in 2022 and the Women in Motion Award in 2024. Her major exhibitions in recent years have included the solo exhibitions Postwar Shadows at the J. Paul Getty Museum (2015) and Grain and Image at the Yokohama Museum of Art (2017), as well as Step Through Time at the Okawa Museum of Art (August 2024).