Asako Narahashi - new artist at Galerie Priska Pasquer

February 1, 2008

Recently we have added the photographs by the Japanese women artist Asako Narahashi to our gallery program. The first presentation of her work at the Paris Photo fair was quite successful and the press responded very enthusiastic to her series “half awake and half asleep in the water”. Hans-Michael Koetzle wrote in the magazine “Photo International” that Asako Narashashi’s work was “definitely the discovery at this years Paris Photo”.¹

Also the German magazine “Photonews” dedicated a double page to Asako Narahashi’s series.² A part of the series was already exhibited in Japan and abroad, for example in the exhibition “Kiss in the Dark”, curated by Michiko Kasahara at the Tokyo Metroplitan Museum of Photography. Michiko Kasahara characterized the serie “half awake and half asleep in the water” as follows:

“The title of the series [...] is very cleverly expressed. Her works, while betraying the stereotyped images of resort areas, somehow make visible as a shared recognition the image of the sea that people embrace. Therein, an uncomfortable feeling like seasickness and a pleasurable feeling of floating and entrusting yourself to the sea lodge side by side.[...] They call forth an ambivalent feeling.”
[Quote: Michiko Kasahara: Kiss in the Dark. Tokyo 2001]

Nazraeli Press has recently published a large format monograph with the complete series of “half awake and half asleep in the water” which should be available soon. In the introduction to the book Martin Parr noted on Asako Narahashi’s unusual and new view on Japan:

“How can the same thing look so different?”³

Biography:
1959 Born in Tokyo.
1989 Graduated from faculty of art, Waseda University, majoring in art
1990 Opened the independent photo gallery “03FOTOS” in Tokyo
1996-2000 Published the photography magazine ‘main’
1998 Award “New Member Prize” of ‘The Japanese Photography Association’
2004 Award by the ‘Shashin-no-kai’ (Photographic Society)’

Publications:
2007 “half awake and half asleep in the water”, published by Nazraeli Press
2004 “FUNICULI FUNICULA”, published by Sohkyu-sya
1996-2000 “main” (independent foto magazine)
1997 “NU-E”, published by Sohkyu-sya

1. Michael Koetzle: “Paris Photo: Spitzenwerke, Spitzenpreise”. Photo International, 01/ 2008, p. 8 [↩]
2. Photonews 2/8, p. 8-9 [↩]
3. “half awake and half asleep in the water”. Photographs by Asako Narahashi. Introduction by Martin Parr. Nazraeli Press, Tucson, 2007. [↩]

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