Name: Hester - Kumi Oguro
SKU: 10812
Price: 40.0 EUR
Availability: InStock

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Kumi Oguro - Hester

Product Details

Kumi Oguro has been photographing female figures since the beginning of her career, but the way she represents women has evolved considerably over the years. The innocent, childlike women with sensual characteristics found in her earliest images have made way for dreamlike creatures with an intangible aura, reflecting the complexity involved in describing dreams.

Here, the female figures exist on the borders of worlds that are fragile, attractive, and entertaining, but also disturbing and subversive. The photographer believes that this extreme duality is unique to women, and thus seeks to reflect on and represent it. When creating the series Hester Kumi was strongly influenced by the portrait of a fictional woman in the novel A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. One of the important characters, named Hester, became a source of inspiration for Kumi Oguro due to her extreme temperament. Thus, as she explains in the text accompanying the series, ‘Hester is an extrovert, aggressive and chaotic, but also sensitive, loving and charming. I suppose it is true to say that to a certain extent, I could call all the women in my photographs “Hester”, with a lot of affection.'

Born in Japan in 1972, Kumi Oguro has been living and working in Antwerp since 1999. After starting her studies in London at the Blake College and the City of Westminster College, she then moved to Belgium, where she developed her photographic practice while experimenting with video and installation art at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Antwerp.

Editing and sequencing: Kumi Oguro
Design: Kumi Oguro & Bruno Devos
104 pages
21 x 26.3 cm
Texts by: Alain Delaunois, Hans Van den Broeck
Language: French, English, Japanese
Publication date: February 2021
ISBN: 9789464363494