Aki TANAKA

"Sunshine Volition"

Pages: 64 / photos: 52
Size: 135×195×10mm / hardcover
Price: 2,205JPY
Release Date: April 2011
ISBN978-4-88773-117-2

Web-site

On clear days I let my memories guide me as I look up to the sky.
The autumn sky in Japan is particularly evocative.
The glimmering warm sunshine,
the rustling of the trees, their fragrance.
The murmuring of the wind and the clear blue.
In the refreshing air, wrapped in the rays of the sun,
I feel very good.

I am searching for something beyond
the power of words.

Wind, water, fire, sound, light, the sun.
Scientists tell us that these things
share shimmering waves
that are called 1/f fluctuations.
They say that these waves occur in us as well.
Even the pulse of our hearts is in tune
with these fluctuations.

(Excerpts from the author's postscript)

Aki TANAKA

"Sunshine Pulse"

Pages: 64 / photos: 53
Size: 135x195x11mm / hardcover
Price: 2,205JPY
Release Date: April 2010
ISBN978-4-88773-109-7

Web-site

          The sun is the source of all life. It makes me imagine happiness, hope, a bright future, and the joy of life.

          In 2002, I looked back at my photographs, and was intrigued to notice that my eyes had always been drawn to the sun. Since then, I began to think that I wanted to capture sensory and emotional phenomena─fragrance, timbre, warmth, joy, sorrow, fear, pain, hope, memory, even something vertiginous─through photography.

        In 2006, while discussing my book “Let The Sun Shines In” with my publisher, Mr. Takahashi, he often made reference to the many photographs of sunshine and sakura which I had taken. He said, “letユs make another series, next time with sunshine and sakura only.” At that moment, I decided to work on “Sunshine Pulse,” a series of photographs of the sun and sunshine, capturing the vibrancy of newly─blossoming sakura, together with the overflowing sunshine of budding spring.

        In 2009, I find myself constantly wavering between hope and anxiety. When I sense these feelings as a “now” of emotional and sensory phenomena, I try to capture them as a photograph in bright sunshine.

　　  This work is a reflection of my present, and of my vision for the  future.

(From the author's postscript)

Aki TANAKA

"The Sun Shines In"

Pages: 48 / photos: 42
Size: 155x230x9mm / hardcover
Price: 2,000JPY
Release Date: June 2007

Web-site

In this work, Tanaka Aki took pictures of flowers, but not with the interest of the botanist or the weekend hobbyist. Instead, she wanted to use flowers as a medium through which to capture sunlight. The result is a work which is indeed brightly colored, but where the light seems to be leaking out of the images, as if the film had been literally bombarded with visual information and was unable to record it all. But the blurry quality of these images is not to the detriment of the work. The photographs in this book could be viewed almost as abstract paintings, where the pattern and texture of the color that has been captured might be more important than the real object that they represent.