05/04/21 - Philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that, in these times, humans live between the past and an uncertain future, so we must learn to think differently, without resorting to more traditional ways of thinking. Tomoko Yoneda (Japan, 1965), influenced by this concept, wants us to look more deeply at her photographic images, since they are capable of suggesting a different future.

With these words by Paul Wombell, we are welcomed to Tomoko Yoneda's exhibition at the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid, an exhibition that is almost a retrospective of her work, focused on the geographical scope, from Europe to Asia.

Western-style window, by Tomoko Yoneda (1995)

Classroom 1, by Tomoko Yoneda (2004)

The first photo is an image taken after the earthquake on January 1997 in the city of Köbe, Japan, the residence of Tomoko's family. She was not in the city at the time of the event, but she traveled three months later and that’s when she takes the shot of the window in black and white: a residual image of what was an uncontrollable natural tragedy. The second is from 2004, when, with the city already rebuilt, she photographs a classroom that served as a temporary funeral home after the earthquake. 

Railroad track, by Tomoko Yoneda (2007)

Shenyang, China

A photo of a natural or urban landscape may be, at first glance, inconsequential but if we read the sign, everything changes. The photographer manages to create tension between what she portrays and what happened in these places. For example, a view of a minefield in Paju, South Korea, now a tourist attraction, or a simple train track that witnessed a simulated bomb attack by the Japanese army to justify its invasion of Manchuria.

But not everything on display is about a natural disaster or the war. One of the curatorial subjects of the exhibition has the title Between the Visible and the Invisible, where we are invited to look through the glasses of prominent figures of the 20th century, to see details of pages of books and letters that are still relevant today. The shots have the particularity of locating us in the exact place where the historical figure would be, which helps us to imagine what they would be thinking at that precise moment. 

Finally we choose two photos of the natural world, as if to predict a future in it. The first shows the ephemeral ice crystals that form at low temperatures and that deform and disappear as soon as the degrees increase. It is a perfect combination between the photographic aesthetics of the Bauhaus, which borders on the abstract, and Japanese sensibilities, where by looking at a fleeting moment of the physical world, something more profound about the nature of existence can be revealed. In the second one we see a group of chrysanthemums that look like jellyfish floating in the ocean. 

Chrysanthemums, de Tomoko Yoneda (2011)

The exhibition is quite extensive: it occupies almost three floors of the foundation. The curatorship is excellent: each photo has an explanation so as not to lose detail of what we are seeing. Unfortunately, as in almost all exhibitions in which works are exhibited under a glass, it is impossible to avoid interference from the reflection caused the lights (which seems to never be studied in depth).