Rinko Kawauchi｜Early Works 1997 Rinko Kawauchi

In 1997, Rinko Kawauchi (b.1972) won the Grand Prix in the photography category of the 9th Hitotsubo Exhibition (now 1_WALL), and the following year held a solo exhibition, Utatane, at Guardian Garden in Tokyo. The 1998 solo exhibition of the same name, featured a series of photographs that became the forerunner of her first book, Utatane (2001). Many of the photographs exhibited and made during that period were never included in the book and have since not been released to the public. In this mini-portfolio, Kawauchi has selected six of these works from her 1998 solo exhibition to be realised as collotype prints. The works, a starting port of Kawauchi’s career, offers a glimpse of the foundations of her unique visual language.

What is collotype?

In the 1880s, the collotype printing process was introduced to Kyoto and by 1905 Benrido had begun producing collotypes. Collotype is one of the earliest forms of printing techniques and was invented in France in 1855 by Alphonse Poitevin as a method for photographic fine art printing.  Due to the high level of print and archival quality, it has since been used primarily as a way to reproduce and preserve Japan’s National Treasures and cultural properties. Today Benrido Collotype Atelier remains as one of only a few studios left in the world capable of producing fine colour collotype prints.