I went to Mika Ninagawa’s photo exhibition “Tokyo TOKYO”! What kind of picture is a good picture?

Recommended by my photo school’s teacher, I went to see Mika Ninagawa’s photo exhibition “Tokyo TOKYO” for the first time, held at Shibuya PARCO from June 12 to 29 in 2020. What I was interesting in was that most of more than 500 pictures exhibited were taken with QuickSnap, a one-time-use camera. No exposure nor color temperature is adjustable, of course, RAW development is not possible.

At the exhibition, people, city, smiles of family.., many pictures are randomly combined, and put vertically or horizontally, sometimes in U shape, there are various combinations. It didn’t look there was a meaningful method at first glance.

“Why do you think I put them in this way?” It’s like a mysterious question posed by the artist.. I tried to figure it out and thought one picture by another. Of course, there is no right answer.

“Oh, maybe she put all pictures taken in one day, in chronological order ” “All these pictures have people doing peace sign”, “Perhaps, she wanted to compare ‘unreality’ (movie shooting site, night town, or show pub) with ‘reality’ (family, child, empty shelves of supermarket) “, etc. I tried to find the answer in myself. It was enjoyable, I didn’t get tired.

QuickSnap is a film camera. Her photo expressions that gently wrap everything, both ‘unreality’ and ‘reality’ may be because of film?

I remember, “a good picture is a picture that captured what you wanted to take”, is the first thing we learned at the photo school.

This could mean that before taking a good picture, you need to deeply consider “what you want to take” “what you want to convey with the picture”.

Being told so, I was embarrassed as all of my pictures would look insisting unilaterally like “hey, how awesome!”. Then I really didn’t know what to take..

Mika Ninagawa san’s pictures exhibited leave a margin for visitors to think about. She would clearly have things to convey, however every picture, she allows visitors to make their own conclusion.

And the camera. A good picture can be taken not only with a new, expensive camera. We can take good pictures by using QuickSnap as well.

So, I had another thing to remember.

In the 1970’s, Tazuko Masuyama, an amateur photographer who started taking pictures after her age of over 60. I borrowed her photo book from library, titled as “Hometown – my Tokuyama-mura photo diary” which closely introduced the life of Tokuyama village that would be under water due to the dam construction in several years at that time.

Tazuko started taking pictures because she thought if her husband who was missing in the previous Pacific War, would return, she had no way to explain the disappearance of the village. She used the camera called “Pikkari Konica (Konica C35 EF)”, a legendary auto compact camera that let anybody can take photos.

The pictures that she gently captured smiles of village folks and enjoyable time in the village, give viewers time to interact with their own memories. Though the message that she wanted to convey was firmly there.

What else, both Mika Ninagawa’s photo exhibition and Tazuko Masuyama’s photo book have in common are many smiles. It tells us that both photographers are loved by their models. As a photo-taker, I’m pretty envious.

What kind of picture is a good picture?

There must be many answers.

While a viewer imagine what a photographer wanted to convey, the picture overlaps with the person’s own memory and thought. That’s definitely a good photo.

Taking photo is so profound!