Japan

Japan – even those who have never been there have images of the land of the rising sun in their heads, either the old ones: Geishas and rice wine, kimono and cherry blossom or the new ones: karaoke and skyscrapers, crowds of people in the underground, one knows about the incompatibility of the tempos, remembers how Bill Murray – in the film “Lost in Translation” by Sofia Coppola – records the silly commercial.
Japanese images, stereotypes: you imagine what you know, even though you know nothing.

The new photo cycle by Berlin photographer Frauke Eigen, on the other hand, shows confusingly different images of Nippon. They are far removed from any clichés. At first glance, these works, which were taken on several trips to Japan in 2006, seem completely placeless. All that can be seen are wall surfaces, structures, geometric shapes, architectural images that – devoid of people – seem to tell nothing of cities and buildings, of Japanese life. But a superficial glance is not enough – as is always the case with this artist’s work – because these photos are actually steeped in Japanese tradition and culture – and therefore in reality. Tatami, the Japanese rectangular mat, appears again and again; in a traditional Japanese house it is laid out on the floor. In modern Japan, the tatami structure can be seen on buildings and walls. Frauke Eigen shows the beauty and charming simplicity of this structure; when enlarged, an aluminium wall suddenly looks like a traditionally folded piece of paper, a wall appears transparent like a window through the play of light and shadow.

In the novel “Snow Country” by Japanese Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata, the protagonist sits in a train compartment and stares spellbound at the reflection of a beautiful fellow traveller. He cannot and does not want to look her directly in the face, as that would be impolite and, above all, would disturb the mystery that surrounds the beauty.
Eigen’s pictures of Japan tell of such a reflection and of a secret, the Japanese secret and that of the photographer, who shows us beauty where apparently there is only surface.

And sometimes a cherry blossom also pops into the picture. This is a special kind of happiness for the viewer.