Miyako Ishiuchi grew up in Yokosuka, in a threatening environment, close to the largest United States Navy base in Japan; she left the city as soon as she could. She began working as a photographer at the end of the Vietnam War (1955-1975). Returning to Yokosuka she started to confront her past, making this her main subject. Three books were consecutively published with Shashin Tsushin-sha editions. The first, Apartment (1978) – snapshots of a small room in an old apartment similar to the one M. Ishiuchi grew up in – won the Kimura Ihei Award in 1979; she was the first woman to win this prize. The other two, Yokosuka Story (1979) and Endless Night (1981), documented the city’s brothels and bars.
In 1990 M. Ishiuchi published 1・9・7・4 (IPC), a collection of close-up shots she made of the hands and legs of women born the same year as her. Her subsequent series, Scars (Sokyusha, 2005), focused on marks on the human body. At the end of the decade she started working with her mother’s belongings and ageing, scarred body. Each item in Mother’s is carefully captured one by one from a frontal perspective. Because of a long-running feud, she had always refused to let M. Ishiuchi take her picture but she agreed just before her death after a short illness. Mother’s was presented in the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2005. For the artist, this work was a way to confront the loss and understand her mother. It also reflects the significant changes Japanese women experienced during the post-war era.

This work of remembrance was the inspiration for a commission about Hiroshima, which resulted in From Hiroshima (2014). She began visiting the city every year to photograph items newly collected by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Carefully arranged on a light table, a dress tells the story of its original owner. During the war, amidst shortages, women were forced to hide their silk dresses by wearing them beneath monpe (work pants). Even when burnt or ripped, each stitch of these dresses was sewn with the utmost care, giving us a sense of the preciousness of the fabric. Each item returns the individuality to every woman victim of the bombing.
M. Ishiuchi pursued the reflection on clothing and memories in 2013 at the invitation of the Frida Kahlo Foundation by making a series in the Blue House, the Frida Kahlo Museum. Tadasuke Kotani documented her Frida series in the documentary The Legacy of Frida Kahlo (2015). Fifty years after the Mexican artist’s death, the Japanese photographer took photos of her belongings. These photographs pared back the mythologised icon that became F. Kahlo layer by layer, providing us with glimpses into her daily life.

Although M. Ishiuchi’s style has evolved since her early works, her themes have never changed. Her photography focuses on the pain embedded in memories, reproducing “scars” so that they can be a part of the universal vision.
M. Ishiuchi received the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2013, the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography in 2014 and the Asahi Prize in 2023.