As It Is — by Rinko Kawauchi

Pale, iridescent, fragile, buoyant, ethereal, quiet…still. If a mother’s lullaby could be heard through the eyes, that’s how it would be seen in these photographs. Rinko Kawauchi’s latest book, As It Is, published by Chose Commune, delivers a tender elegy to birth, motherhood, and the inextricable link of that bond to our surrounding world.

Kawauchi’s images feel like ghostly apparitions of dreams remembered the morning after. In desperation you try to recall events as they happened, in the order they unfolded, but the best your memory can offer is the weight of a love, the touch of familiar skin, the sound of a trembling sky, the luminance of light. And in a way, that memory procures a truth as beautiful as the dream itself. That’s a Kawauchi photograph.

That light!—calming, graceful, radiant—the faithful guardian present in every one of these pictures. Looking at Kawauchi’s world feels a lot like seeing our own world anew, from below, up close, through the eager eyes of a child unburdened by expectations. This world brims with possibility. But inseparably woven into this wonderment is the honest beauty of life’s constant reminder to us: nothing will ever stay as it is. A child will grow in mind and stature. Dew drops on a blade of grass will ascend to the sun. That same sun will pry open the buds of a dormant tree. The vestiges of slumber in static fields of hair, angling upward like wind-swept brush, will eventually fold back to the head. A bubble wafts through the air; the skin of water carrying the weight of a single breath. It will undoubtedly burst, or rather, it already has long ago. Encased in the four walls of a photograph, these lyrical observations hang suspended, performing for us indefinitely.

Photography excels in its ability to fix what is always in flux, to decelerate the speed of existence—something we are all experiencing at a dizzying pace. Looking through photographs of our own families or of the natural world, we are reminded that all of life is a cycle. Love will burst like spring, and just as swiftly freeze like winter. Perhaps that is why we photograph those we love most—an attempt to embalm what is already slowly expiring. But if photographs can teach us the lessons in loss, maybe they too can show us the promise of renewal. Those dew drops will surely form again. The spider will spin a stronger web. Broken hearts will mend. Death secedes the stage to birth…and back again. This book is an ode to life’s totality in all its bang and hush, and with reverence, Kawauchi urges us to slow down and consider the grandiosity of it all. Every small creature, every whispered moment between mother and child— they matter. For these small anchors become our portals to a deeper connection and presence with the world. That’s photography’s gift to us.

Closing the delicately wrapped covers to As It Is, my eyes are left refreshed as they would after a deep sleep, and I return to the world recalling a beautiful dream. I see it all around me, as it always was, and as it is now. If you stand perfectly still, perhaps you can see it too.