as it is Rinko Kawauchi

The work as it is is Rinko Kawauchi’s newest photobook, composed of photographs taken over roughly three years following her child’s birth, documenting her child and the intimate scenes encountered during motherhood.

Interspersed with short texts reflecting her feelings as a mother, the book presents an ongoing family narrative while simultaneously addressing the universality of the vital, living presence of a child. It captures the beauty of light and nature found through the changing seasons, small creatures discovered in daily life, and the first experience of death—the beauty of life residing within these subtle events, and the days accumulated through these discoveries.

Over the twenty years since her debut photobook Utatane (2001), Kawauchi has continuously shifted her gaze from everyday happenings toward the external world, leading to recent works like Halo (2017), which explored imagery evoking the distant cosmos. With as it is, she once again returns to her origins, refocusing on the immediate, everyday scenery alongside her child and family.