GALLERY
miyuki yamanaka
Camilla Ginevra Bo’ is an Italian architect and freelance journalist. She gained her degree in architecture in Rome, spending two years of the course studying in Paris. After she graduated in 2011, she returned to Rome to pursue a career in art, design and fashion criticism. Whilst in Rome, Bo’ completed the fashion editing and styling course at the European Institute of Design. She also began writing about art and design for the Italian Association of Architecture and Criticism and on her personal blog. In September 2012 Camilla moved to London to study Art Direction for Fashion at Central Saint Martins. Since completing the course she joined SHOWstudio: The Home of Fashion Film as the Gallery Assistant and she is now working as a freelance contributor for different magazines.
“Summer diary” by Miyuki Yamanaka is a diary to document the death of her mum. More than that, a tribute to life.
While many individual images are stunners (the shocking death portrait for example) the book make it clear these images were meant to be seen together and viewing them any other way is like taking a single line from a long poem.
The sky plays a key element in this project and acts as a handhold. It constantly appears and disappears like a breath of fresh air. The sky is the only element able to connect everyone to the mother, the symbol of family.With a disarming lucidity, Miyuki tells me about the agony and resignation in front of something there’s no way to fight for. She tells me about an inner force that she didn’t believe she could be able of, totally unexpected and surprising.
This work that stands in the tradition of japanese aesthetic is particularly spectacular for its disarming simplicity.
Everyone can look at the sky but few know how to paint the sky in a so universal way. Miyuki transforms the reality that surrounds her into art, a reality that is no longer the simple nature, but the complicated world in which we live.
When you showed me the diary for the first time, I thought about how strong you must have been to shoot what was happening. Why did you choose to document one of the hardest moment in life?
Over there, in that moment, there was no time to think. I never had this urge to document this event, I was just clicking the shutter. I didn’t clearly understand why I did it. So I kept all the films in a drawer to let them sleep for a while. Then I gradually understood what it was… I wanted to tell the fact that nature of life is like this, at least mine. It was hard but natural and in a positive way.
Emerge a job done with great discretion, not screamed but collected in a good period of time. Why did you wait 3 years to let it out?
For 2/3 years I was digesting the event and not sure this would be something I’d like to share with someone else. I also wanted to wait and see how the form of my family was changing; grandma was getting emaciated, cousins got pregnant, getting to know about my dad as a person. I never had this strong relationship with my local place and family except for my childhood. And then when I saw the sky in London 2012, everything came to the point.
The sky is the key element of the project. What does it mean to you?
Looking up to the sky, I can feel all the things are connected and that I am just a part of it. It’s about invisible things. There, in the sky. Mom is now, in a way, closer to me. How I explained on the cover, we will eventually go back to the nature again. I feel my mom is part of me. She is everywhere; in the water I drink, in the air I breath. The fact to understand that the death is a natural event make me feel more calm and stronger. We tend to rely on tangible things but what I want to observe is something we cannot to see, which causes us pain but also gives me great pleasure.
Listening to you it seems to be a positive message out of the miserable events in life… how did you arrive to this?
Nothing would be the same; space, people… and you. Everything is just temporary. It was such a shock to realize that it’s certain I’m dying someday. What is important and what is not to me, it became more clear now, and how important simple things are in life.
Born in Nara, Japan, after 8 years in London, she recently came back to her home country to develop some intimate projects… I can see her so far from here, walking silently, pondering, surrounded by nature. Because it’s nature her only way.
Camilla Bo’
