M/E.

Mother/Earth. Photographs by Rinko Kawauchi. Text by Teju Cole.

Delpire & Co & Torch Press, 2025. 216 pp., 8¾x11½".

Bee is in the flower
Flower is in the garden
Garden is in the yard
Yard is in the town
Town is in Japan
Japan is in the world

And, and then, God
is in the tiny little bee.

— Misuzu Kaneko

This poem by Misuzu Kaneko, an unjustly forgotten Japanese poet from the early 20th century who was rediscovered by the Japanese public at the time of the Fukushima disaster (her poems were read on television), inspired Rinko Kawauchi to write this new book. Paying homage to this author, the photographer explores our relationship with the world, encouraging us to reconsider our links as human beings with nature.

Rinko Kawauchi has named her book M/E in reference to Mother/Earth, but has kept only the initials (me in English) to emphasize the link she has with Mother Earth. She casts a singular, gentle eye over the living world to capture its fragile beauty: that of a dewdrop on a leaf, or the gigantic front of a glacier in front of which levitates the white halo of a cloud of steam caused by the ice collapsing into the sea. The artist’s approach is highly intuitive: her images are not constructed, they ‘just happen’. The result: images that are almost meditative, as if emerging from a dream. They can be poetic, mysterious, even bizarre. What’s more, they are not perfectly clear. Rinko Kawauchi seeks out the ephemeral, capturing that fleeting moment before the eye accommodates itself.

The artist captures her immediate environment and her family as well as more spectacular subjects. In this book, she presents a dialogue between images from Iceland and Japan, focusing mainly on water: clouds, rain, rainbows, ice, snow, torrents, mist… The book is constructed by playing with the idea of transparency, which is so dear to his heart. The images are printed on very fine Japanese paper and are gradually revealed. White pages, like silences, punctuate the sequences. The cover, meanwhile, is splattered with shards of silver that reflect the light.

Torch Press made the Japanese/English edition and delpire&co made the French/English edition. This book differs from the exhibition catalogue “Rinko Kawauchi: M/E On this sphere Endlessly interlinking” in that it is a collection of photographs from the “M/E” series only.

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Cat# ZK758H Hardbound $76.50 (979-1-09-582180-9)
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