As it is

Biographie

1973, Japan. Miho Kajioka lives in Barcelona. Besides her artistic activities, she also works as a producer in Japan for news and documentary programs of various television channels: CBS, Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, France 24, ORF (Austrian Broadcasting).

Présentation

For many years I didn’t pursue my work as an artist, but tragedy returned me to it. After studying fine art in the U.S. and Canada, I arrived back in my native Japan and began a career in journalism. It was the earthquake and tsunami in 2011 that reconnected me to photography. Two months after the disaster, while reporting in the coastal city of Kamaishi, where over 800 people died, I found roses blooming beside a devastated building. That mixture of grace and ruin made me think of a Japanese poem written by the Zen monk Dogen:
In the spring, cherry blossoms,
In the summer the cuckoo,
In autumn the moon, and in

Winter the snow, clear, cold.
The roses I saw in Kamaishi bloomed simply because it was spring. That beautiful and uncomplicated statement, made by roses in the midst of ruin, impressed me, and returned me to photography.