AWARDS
The Domestic Photographer Award
Reason for award
For her recent projects, including her exhibition “Kon Michiko 2024 Exhibition” (PGI, 2024.)
Born in Kamakura City, Kanagawa, KON studied printmaking at Sokei Academy of Fine Art and Design and later specialized in photography at the Tokyo College of Photography. She began her career as an artist in 1985 with the solo exhibition “Still Life”. Creating objects using food such as vegetables and fish, flowers, and insects, she photographs these unique subjects and imprints the images onto photographic paper. Her artwork, born from her rich imagination, emerges on monochrome surfaces, blending the beauty of the real and the virtual worlds.
Her recent exhibitions include “Michiko Kon 2024” at PGI, Tokyo, and “Michiko Kon” at totonoel, Fukushima, both in 2024, as well as “philia –– KON Michiko” at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura Annex, Kanagawa, in 2021. She has also participated in group exhibitions, such as the Arles Photo Festival “I’m So Happy You Are Here” at Palais de l’Archevêché in France in 2024, “From Japan with Love” at Galerie Écho 119 in France in 2024, “The Crystallization of Photographic Expression and Technique” at FUJIFILM Square, Tokyo, in 2023, and “Matatakuhifu, Shikarahakkousurusei” at Ashikaga Museum of Art, Tochigi, in 2020.
She has received several awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Photographic Society of Japan Awards in 2022, the 16th Kimura Ihei Photography Award from the Asahi Shimbun in 1991, and the New Photographer Award, Higashikawa International Photo Festival in 1987.
Her works are included in the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art and Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art in Kanagawa, the Art Institute of Chicago, George Eastman Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in the United States.
Artist Statements
When I received the New Photographer Award at the Higashikawa International Photo Festival in 1987, the Domestic Photographer Award went to Mr. NARAHARA Ikko.
I still treasure the memory of receiving the certificate alongside him and spending a few intense days with some truly incredible photographers.
Looking back at my own photo books, I find it curious that what’s captured there — cabbages from 40 years ago, sardines and myself from 30 years ago — still exist just as they were then, fresh and unchanged.
That, I believe, is the allure of photography.
I started photography in my twenties, and while I can’t say I’ve been actively involved in photographic work ever since, I also never got tired of it or quit. What kept me going wasn’t an overwhelming obsession, but rather a faint attachment, some kind supporters, and a feeling that it was simply part of my everyday life.
I am grateful that the Higashikawa Awards have continued for so long and that so many photographers have been honored by it.
KON Michiko
