At first, it looks like a nature-themed Pinterest board, a constellation of neatly arranged, anodyne squares. Rinko Kawauchi’s photographs don’t pierce or punch, hers is a quieter gaze. As the 52-year-old Japanese photographer says “people often say that I have a child’s eye”.
Kawauchi is best known for photobooks, and this exhibition at the Arnolfini, At the Edge of the Everyday World, has the pacing of a book. The series AILA moves in clusters of jewel-like images, gently glinting, urging close study. Then the soft focus and natural light Kawauchi prefers gives way to surprises, such two images of birth – labour just after the second stage, the immense moment the head emerges into the world for the first time; another baby mere minutes after birth, umbilical cord still attached. Above the image, a newborn bird raises its neck out of a muddy nest; nearby there’s a confounding closeup of animals suckling – the connections are concise, if a little on-the-nose. Larger images swell and surge with the incomprehensible awe of nature, panning out, taking in waterfalls, waves crashing, night skies, baby reptiles held in the palm of the hand. With its rising and falling cadence, the rhythm also subtly nods to the Bristol photo festival’s overarching title for 2024, The World a Wave.
