Yuki Kimura
Past Artist In Residence
2002

The Japanese born photographer and installation artist, Yuki Kimura, is well known for her photographs that quite well address the question, “Why is it that I am alive here and now?”, he asks. Kimura’s photographs take this question, which lies beneath all photography, and bring it to the surface. Her subjects, caught in the present moment, break the illusion of their stillness, their assuredness, to remind us, with sly humor, that they were born and will die. She places both her subjects and the viewer in the midst of the wide network of historical, social and biological forces that form and inform us. Looking both forwards and back, her photographs not only confront the inevitability of our own death but also marvel at the continuation of life. Self-reflexive and charming, funny and perplexing, Kimura’s photographs, on a further level, interrogate the very way we perceive images. This is true both of the portraits and of her lesser-known series of landscape and travel photos, which were the subject of this small show in Los Angeles entitled ‘Deep-Take’. Playing off the word ‘diptych’ as well as the filmic techniques of deep-focus and long-take, Kimura presented pairs of images that compelled the viewer to look twice.