Rinko Kawauchi graduated from Seian Women’s College (now Seian University of Art and Design). In 2002 she received the 37th Kimura Ihei Award for her two photobooks published in 2001, Utatane [Drowsiness] and Hanabi[Fireworks]. The photographs in Utatane exemplify her style, capturing the elusive, fragile, yet profoundly beautiful qualities of time, light, and colour within a square-format frame. Instead of focusing on specific objects or motifs, her photographs reveal subtle aspects of reality that are often overlooked in the busy pace of daily life. These images emerged in her mind during moments of drowsiness, as she began to drift off to sleep, and she realised that some of these visual memories had unconsciously become part of her.

To R. Kawauchi, quietness, fragility and anxiety are inherent beauty, and she sought to capture these qualities in her photographs. In her photobook Illuminance (2009), she demonstrates her ability to quickly evoke images stored in her subconscious and seamlessly combine them with others. This photobook, which begins and ends with images of a solar eclipse that, in reality, lasted just three and a half minutes, is the finest illustration of this skill.

Since the beginning of her career, R. Kawauchi has consistently explored the cyclical nature of birth and death in her image-making. While the subject matter varies = from landscapes to scenes of local Japanese rituals – this theme remains constant, particularly evident in her series Ametsuchi [Heaven and Earth], which was published as a photobook in 2013. R. Kawauchi began photographing in Aso, Kumamoto Prefecture. in 2007, initially capturing a scene of a burning field. In early spring, fields are burned to maintain the pastures and river. Standing on the ground in Aso, R. Kawauchi felt a profound connection to the earth, as if experiencing it for the first time.

For this same series, R. Kawauchi also photographed Shiromi Kagura in Miyazaki Prefecture. Kagura is a ritual dance performed across Japan at the end of each year to celebrate a bountiful harvest and is directed towards the heavens. R. Kawauchi found that the cycles of nature were intertwined with civilization through human activity. As her subject matter expanded in scale, both in time and place, her work began to increasingly reflect the themes of birth, loss and rebirth.

According to R. Kawauchi, her perspective did not change much even after giving birth at the age of 44. However, as her daughter has grown, her awareness of the relentless nature of loss has become more acute. Her 2020 photobook As it is comprises photos taken until her daughter turned three years old, accompanied by texts based on the artist’s feelings as a mother during those early years.

In 2009, R. Kawauchi received the Infinity Award for Art from the International Center of Photography, earning her worldwide acclaim. Her solo show Illuminance, Ametsuchi, Seeing Shadow was held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in 2012, for which she was awarded the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists.