ORISAKU Mineko Time Opening remarks given by His Excellency, Mr.Tetsuo Ito, Ambassador of Japan to Hungary Compliments by Ferenc Kósa, Kossuth Prize winner film director Curator of the exhibition is: Károly Kincses, photomuseologist Open to the public: 29. October - 6. December 2009. Every weekdays: 14.00 – 19.00 Weekend: 11.00 – 19.00
Orisaku Mineko: Time | Orisaku Mineko

What is on exhibition now?

43 large photographs made with the giclée process, printed on numerous mediums: barite photographic paper, water colour paper, canvas, hand-made paper. Thus their appearance and the effect they have are very various and different from each other. There is nothing on them. Only lotus blossom, gnarled trees, landscapes bathed in an unlikely purple light and other such useless things. They do not help the world to move ahead, they are just beautiful; they just help us to take a short break from the inhuman world we live in. Perhaps they show a wicket-gate we can use to step out of the dusty, life-threatening arena where games of life or death are played out. At such times perhaps the things these pictures immortalize, are not so useless after all.

What is Japan like? What is a Japanese photograph like? What is a young and attractive Japanese art photographer like, who was chosen as Miss Universe Japan in 1981 and who now not only takes photographs, but also teaches photography at Osaka University?

We have countless ready-made phrases we can summon up at any time. Japan is a unique combination of tradition and the most modern technology. Cherry trees grow in Japan. Fujiyama is in Japan. Japan has the top technology of the 21st century. Everyone knows these or even more obvious examples.

If you want to find out how near the truth these stereotypes are, have a look at Mineko Orisaku’s exhibition. It is Japanese, traditional, beautiful and modern. And very different to what we are used to here in Hungary or in this region. It is not just trying to appear like this. It is like this. It is not artificial creation someone has sweated over, but the product of a culture ingrained for over a thousand years. It comes from the soul.

Her pictures may answer questions such as how we can be very modern, contemporary and trendy while at the same time preserving our traditions. How two cultures, Far Eastern and European, can reinforce each other. Mineko Orisaku has taken photographs all over the world, organized exhibitions using her pictures and published photo albums. In these pictures it was not Boston, Switzerland, New Zealand or Turkey that interested me, but the artist herself. How much has she been able to retain of the way she learned to see and create pictures at home and how much of this has been swept away by everything she has seen and experienced in other parts of the world, so very different from her own? The answers are or could be in Orisaku’s pictures. But there is no harm in hearing Orisaku’s own opinion: ‘What is important for me in photography is that pictures are made one at a time, when we feel the essence of what we are seeing at a given moment. As long as we are incapable of making time stand still with our eyes, it is only photography that has the ability to capture instant situations.’

(Károly Kincses)

http://www.orisaku.com/

The exhibition is part of the programmes organized in honour of the 140th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic affairs between Japan and Hungary.

The presentation of the exhibition in Hungary was supported by Nikon and Swietelsky Hungary Kft.