How to Make a Pearl (One Picture Book)

How to Make a Pearl (One Picture Book) by Yuki Onodera. First edition (2005). First impression small hardback (one of 500) in new condition. #333 of this Nazraeli Press One Picture Book. Signed and numbered by Yuki Onodera to copyright page. Contains a tipped-in print. No markings. Please see pictures. PayPal accepted, any questions please get in touch.

About How to Make a Pearl

Onodera photographed groups of people on the street during the day. She inserted a lass marble into her camera. The marble then disperses the light. Creating shadows in the photographs. Also creating scenes in which an eerie white sphere seems to be floating above people gathered in the darkness. The glass marble transforms an actual street scene into a mysterious illusion. Therefore making us aware of the “black box” camera that intercedes between the photographer and the subjects. The title refers, of course, to the way a pearl is formed when a foreign object enters a mollusk’s shell. The enlarged grain of the photos, created chemically during the development process, becomes the material of these giant, two meter photographs, powerfully lifting the people out of the surrounding darkness in sharp relief.

Artist Bio

Yuki Onodera was born in Tokyo (1962). In 1993, she established a studio in Paris and then began to work internationally. Onodera’s experimental work, which does not fit within schemas of “photography,” often poses two questions: what is photography, and what can be done through it? Consequently, she uses any possible method to realize her works. Whether this means taking photographs with a marble inside her camera, or creating a story out of a legend and traveling to the ends of the earth to shoot it. Onodera is known for making two meter high prints in the darkroom, painting on her photographs, and also for other original hands-on methods. Her work is held in collections around the world, including those of Centre Georges Pompidou, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Shanghai Art Museum and The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Among other locations, her solo exhibitions have been held at The National Museum of Art, Osaka (2005), Shanghai Art Museum (2006), The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (2010), The Museum of Photography, Seoul (2010) and Musée Nicéphore Niépce, France (2011).

Related Links

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