Your name Kumi Oguro Place of birth Japan Place where you live now Antwerp, Belgium 3 words to describe you Silence, Noise, Dream Why do you take pictures? Because photography is for me an ideal tool to create a world just next to our reality. Where do you get your inspiration? Films, (dance) theatre, music and literature. Who are your influences? A long time ago Francesca Woodman and Anna Gaskell showed me the way. What determines the subject matter you choose? I create staged photographs using female models. Why only women? Because to me, it is only women who possess extreme duality: they are balancing on a thin line between the alluring and the eerie, the fragile and the destructive, the playful and the tragic. What impact would you like your art to have? My images don't tell a story or offer any logical explanations. By watching, or rather, by being confronted by them, I would like the viewer to be stimulated to enter into their own fantasy. What artwork do you never get bored with? Same answer as my inspiration: film, theatre, literature, though I am quite picky. In terms of creating, yes, photography. Is there anything you want to add? Please have a look at my artist book HESTER, published in 2021 by Stockmans Art Books.
HESTER is the title of one of the photographs featured and originally taken from a character in the novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving. I am drawn to this fictional female, Hester, because of her extreme nature; she is an extrovert, aggressive and chaotic, but also sensitive, loving and charming.
With a lot of affection, I could call all the women in my photographs HESTER. I work with female models in staged settings, to create a world without any logical flow or narrative, which is similar to our waking dreams. In the spring of 2020, I had to cancel a couple of photo shoots with models, following the first lockdown in Belgium. After the initial shock and panic, I decided to photograph anyway in the empty house where one of the shoots had been planned. Without models of course. Something I would not easily consider trying before. Because of this challenging experience, I started paying more attention to spaces, what had often tended to be merely the background. So here I am, in search of what is still to come.
