Interview with Laurie Toby Edison

by Debbie Notkin

Kyoto Journal 2006

The human body keeps changing all the time and can expand its possibilities infinitely.

Art should not be displayed, but should be what people living today need for their lives. So even if it is old, it must be infused with the breath of living now. In this sense, the human body is the highest art.

— KIM Manri

Photographer Laurie Toby Edison talks with her writing collaborator, Debbie Notkin, about a Japanese project:

DN: What is Women of Japan about?

LTE: All of my portraiture projects are about the beauty and power of the models, about making the invisible visible, about finding ways to bring out something essential about each person I photograph, and about using imagery for social change. Women of Japan is all of that, and it’s also about Japanese identity.

I’ve never given the name “Japanese woman” to myself.

When they call me “Oriental,” “Japanese,” “woman,” “28 years old,” “single,” I murmur “It’s not ’bout me.

However

I know that giving a name is a very important thing, perhaps.

’Cause we can’t recognize each other without it.

Is it possible to love each different flower out of many without names?

— OKUDA Yoko

DN: Would you talk about portraiture and how it works for you?

LTE: When I’m doing a photo shoot, I know right away if I’m getting a good portrait (which isn’t the same as knowing exactly which shots I will like when I look at the contact sheets). My work is exactly the opposite of the photography of “freaks” of any sort. Some photographers choose to make photographs of people who are not like them and not like their presumed viewers. They exaggerate or underscore the ways in which the models are outside of some theoretical norm. I choose to make photographs of people who are in some specific way different from me, and to reflect our shared qualities in the photographs, and those qualities are then reflected again in the eyes of the viewers.

To what extent can a photo express the truth of me?

I was somewhat anxious, as a part of myself exists in that space of the photo.

I'm not good at performing a smiling face, or posing as if on stage, so I decided just to be myself, presenting my most natural self to the camera.

As I am always conscious of my Ainuness, a fundamental part of my identity which cannot be easily severed from "just being me," expressing myself as a woman, challenged my thinking about this self-identity. Through this experience a strange feeling came over me, thinking about myself and pondering how best to express this self in an everyday way.

— SHIMAZAKI Naomi

DN: What do you mean when you say that all of your portrait suites are about beauty and power?

LTE: Beauty, for me, is an inclusive rather than an exclusive concept — it is not a commodity. When beauty is perceived as a finite quantity, a characteristic limited to a very narrow slice of people, and when everyone can be made insecure about whether or not they fit into the narrow slice, corporations and governments benefit and people suffer. One social change goal of my work is that I want to convert beauty (and power, and enjoying your own body) from a scarce commodity into a free-flowing natural resource.

As for power, I believe that everyone has personal power, and often the people who are seen as most powerless in a society (such as the fat women I photographed for Women En Large) carry all kinds of unacknowledged power; I like to make that power visible.

I spent so long persevering that the only peace of mind I could attain was through religion, and I am still a fervent believer of Buddhism. But I do not know how to write and, at this age, having endured so patiently, I have become strong and obstinate. My aging body has become creaky in places, but I’m still going strong.

— TERAOKA Mika

DN: Is your work consciously working against stereotype?

LTE: Yes, absolutely. By putting fat women on the continuum of beauty, Women En Large works against the stereotype that thin women are beautiful and fat women are ugly. Familiar Men works against the simplistic stereotypes of masculinity. And the diversity of my work in the United States works against the stereotype that people who matter are all young, thin, blond, and white.

Simply by showing real women, Women of Japan works against the classic stereotypes of Asian women. In the words of Yoshioka Hiroshi, "The women in these photos are totally free of the stale mysterious images often applied to images of women in Asia. The work appeals to no obvious references about Japan, but still seems to tell something very important [Edison] found in this country. Far from exploitation of exotic images, her work gives you a kind of intimate feeling, though you don't know the people in the pictures personally."

DN: What got you started on Women of Japan?

LTE: I first came to Japan in 1996, when my fat nudes were included in the Gender: Beyond Memory show at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. I talked to a lot of people before that trip, many of whom had been to or lived in Japan, and 90% of what people told me was wrong — though there were some exceptions where people were profoundly helpful. One of the things that seemed both wrong to me was the American (and Japanese) cultural myth that Japan is a homogeneous place. Traveling around Tokyo, looking at mostly Asian people, I could see a great variety in facial features, skin color, body size and shape, body language, and the markers of class and status. The more I saw, the more interested I became. As an artist, I don’t feel that I choose my projects: they choose me by the hold they take on my imagination, and Women of Japan was no different.

DN: What do you want to say about the relationship between this project and the concept of Japanese identity?

LTE: I always feel that I have to talk about this work in two ways: one for Japanese people, and one for people who are not from Japan. People who are from Japan, or who have lived here for a long time, may or may not have given much active thought to issues of identity, but they know what’s going on because it’s part of their world. For them, my work brings attention to issues that are part of their lives and their context. I certainly don’t want to try to explain what it’s like in Japan to them, and I’m very wary (even after six trips, some of them extended) of trying to explain what it’s like in Japan to anyone else, either.

Coming to this work as a foreigner and a Westerner, I have to be extremely aware at all times of colonialism, of potential racism, and of the anthropological issues which confront anybody from the west who is doing photography in Asia. I’m not unfamiliar with related issues: since both my previous projects have been about groups that I’m not a member of (fat women, and men), I’ve had to learn a lot about how to bring my visual art into a community context, without imposing it on a group.

My previous experiences made it easy to understand that I had to discuss these issues from the beginning with the people in Japan that I was working with and came into contact with. I also examine other work done both historically and in the present, and I read widely in the area of interest. For the Japanese work, I especially appreciated Edward Said’s Orientalism. But the most important thing I do is work in community.

... on entering my own late twenties I, a typical female alien, decided to leave my nasty home country and look for America.

... staying in the United States carried me into the discovery of feminist reality, in which being a woman gained a crucial significance. But simultaneously, being forced into an English-speaking world, I came to rediscover myself as another kind of alien, that is, an alien called Japanese.

Coming back home, I found my reality radically changed; at that point, I noticed myself metamorphosed into a brand new alien, who cannot help but reconsider the nature of femininity and the essence of Japan. Staying abroad provided me with a lucid perspective of Japanese woman. Still I keep feeling uncomfortable with being Japanese and being woman, while insistently exploring into the nodal point between Japaneseness and womanliness.

— KOTANI Mari

This is why the portrait relationship, the sense of the individual, is so important to me. I’m working with individuals, not with concepts or races or genders: if I was being anthropological or colonial, I couldn’t build the rapport I do with the models, and the results would be very different. When I took the first pictures for this project in 1998, showing them to the women who were in the pictures, and to the other Japanese people involved with the project, was a key step. It was immediately clear that we were all comfortable with the work, and that’s how I knew I was on the right track.

I assumed that I would be asked to pose as an "model Ainu," and so I prepared my traditional Ainu garment to be photographed in. And so when I was asked to pose as "My naked self" and as "a woman," I felt suddenly quite nervous. To be honest, my real intention was to be photographed wearing the Ainu traditional dress. But, Laurie's passion was communicated to me through the lens of the camera, your "naked self," "pose as you like," and yet I feel that my face was still quite nervous. Laurie said "relax" with a smiling face, and waited until I felt comfortable - I felt happiness from my heart. To sit or stand in front of a camera lens is no simple task, and this was definitely a good experience for me.

— KOMATSUDA Hatsumi

As soon as I could, I started doing slide shows, showcasing the work in Japan, asking for feedback from everyone. When I speak in Japan, I don’t talk about identity issues: I let the models and the audience talk, and I listen. I hope that my photographs help various people in Japan see themselves or people like themselves appropriately reflected in the work. The people I talk to often tell me that I’m helping create a context to discuss issues of identity, and of course these issues are different from individual to individual.

I feel a disconnect and an incompatibility between myself as a woman and the system that blankets Japanese society.

— FUKUZAWA Junko

Outside of Japan, I need to create a context for the work, so I do talk about the difference between American and Japanese models for discrimination: the American model is about race, and many Americans feel an undeserved sense of self-righteousness because they think of themselves as “not racists.” Many American activists, including me, are working to change the culture’s underlying racism. The forms of discrimination are not the same in Japan, and I don’t claim to understand the whole context or the subtleties, and at the same time I do know that buraku, Korean residents, Ainu, and Okinawans often experience discrimination in Japan — and that many Japanese activists are working to change this.

I am a Korean born and raised in Japan. I am the third generation counting from my grandmother who first came to Japan. For over 70 years we have lived in Japan for successive generations. But, as it is difficult to obtain Japanese citizenship (I do not want to acquire citizenship under the present humiliating system), our rights as citizens have been wrested from us. ... Sick and tired of living under such strictures, I came to question why I could not attain freedom. ... There was a time when I hated myself for being a Korean. Conversely, there was a time when I hated myself for having Japanese characteristics. Now that I am 46 years old, I can think, ‘The fact that I am here (in Japan) is my history,’ and am able to affirm all aspects of myself. No matter what anyone says, I am a woman who is part of both Japan and Korea.’

— HWANGBO Kangja

DN: Is there anything else you want to say about Women of Japan?

LTE: People can respond to whatever they see in this work that is most important to them. I know everyone will not respond to everything. For some people, the message about beauty may be their key response, while for others it may be power, or resistance to stereotype, or identity. Similarly, when people bring their prejudices to any work, including all three of my portrait suites, they may just never understand what I'm trying to do. It's perfectly possible to see in the work what you see in the world, and not open yourself to what you might learn.

There is no mystery behind these tranquil, beautiful images in “Women of Japan.” Instead of mystery, there is an important sense of comfort. It makes me feel comfortable, just the way the women in the photographs seem to feel. Maybe it is not just comfort, but a feeling you would discover in yourself when find contentment in what you are now. This is not resignation or self-satisfaction, but something coming from a positive decision to be yourself, to get rid of the images and roles pressed on you by society.

— YOSHIOKA Hiroshi

Still, the point of the work is to help open people’s minds to the greater possibilities. Just as I work to bring out the commonalties between the “people not like me” that I photograph and myself and the viewers, I hope that people will look at my photographs and think “us” rather than “them.”