After graduating from the Fashion Design Department of the Kuwasawa Design School in Tokyo, Yuki Onodera taught herself photography, which became her primary medium. She won the First New Cosmos of Photography Award by Canon Inc. in 1991; her work was praised for its “enigmatic value.” While her photographs are often seen as unusual and mysterious, her focus lies in the physicality that photography can transform and reconfigure. Rather than relying on eccentric juxtapositions like the Surrealist method of dépaysement (disorientation), Y. Onodera explores how photography can alter a subject, creating unique textures and impressions.

When Y. Onodera moved to Paris in 1993, she encountered Christian Boltanski’s (1944–2021) solo exhibition Dispersion at Quai de la Gare. In the eponymous work, C. Boltanski created a monument to the Holocaust by piling up a large quantity of torn, second-hand clothes. Inspired by this, Y. Onodera collected some of these clothes, leading to her renowned series Portrait of Second-hand Clothes (1994). Each photograph of the series features an article of unfolded second-hand clothing floating against a cloud-filled sky. The greyscale tones emphasize the stark contrast between the detailed texture of the fabric in the foreground and the blurred, distant sky in the background. This contrast evokes both the presence and absence of the person who once wore the clothes, while the sky symbolizes the flow of time that extends beyond the individual.  Y. Onodera explained that she would wait until she felt the imagined individual had evaporated into thin air before capturing each portrait, using photography to breathe new life into each piece of clothing and evoke memories, even those unknown to the viewer.

It is impossible to combine a variety of textures and their unique individuality within one image without having mastered how they will be captured by photography. As Roland Barthes said, a photograph essentially points to and repeats something that “has been”, and can therefore be considered a “failure,” to capture reality. Y. Onodera continues to apply this methodology in many of her series. In How to Make a Pearl (2000–2001), a glass marble installed in a camera creates shadows in the resulting photographs, making it seem as if a strange white object is floating above people gathering in the darkness. In Liquid, TV and Insect (2002), an image of an insect collected from a TV broadcast is juxtaposed with an image of spilled, paint-like liquid that resembles the insect’s shadow. In >Transvest (2002–ongoing), a photomontage of existing images taken from magazines and newspapers is turned into a silhouette through stage-like backlighting. Eleventh Finger (2006–ongoing) depicts a person’s face covered and hidden by papers perforated in a lace pattern printed through the photogram process, adding another photographic layer to the scene. In Study for “Image à la sauvette” (2015–ongoing), acrylic paint is applied to a printed photograph of distorted plastic bottles whose transparent but existing bodies are only recognisable through reflections of light.

In addition to these creative distortions that show how photography can capture different kinds of physicality in a single image, the size of the printed image in her work fulfils an important function, regardless of whether it is small or large. This is demonstrated in Muybridge’s Twist (2014–ongoing). This series alludes to the English photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904), who in the late 19th century captured the movements of running horses and walking people in serial photographs, Y. Onodera collaged various parts of human bodies and some of animals, creating an image in which a person seems to be dancing the twist. By printing the image on a larger scale than the human body (over 300 × 200 cm), the eerily blended parts create the impression of a twisted sculpture, rather than the sequential movements of a figure. When assembling collages, she enlarges original images taken from fashion photography cutting and collaging to create the final product. The size of the outcome is significant in terms of how it imbues viewers with an overwhelming sense of power, while the process of enlargement transmits the physicality of photography.

Y. Onodera continues to show new series in recent solo shows, such as La clairvoyance du hasard in 2022 at Centre de la photographie de Mougins, France, and in the same year Here, No Balloons at Ricoh Art Gallery, Tokyo. Her major solo exhibitions include Yuki Onodera, Décalages in 2015 at Maison Européenne de la photographie, Paris; Thousand Mirror in the Forest in 2014 at La Maison d’Art Bernard Anthonioz, Nogent-sur-Marne; Gravity-defying photographyin 2011–2012 at Musée Nicéphore Nièpce, Chalon-sur-Saône; Onodera Yuki: Into the Labyrinth of Photography in 2010 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and Onodera Yuki in 2010 at The Museum of Photography, Seoul.
She received the Award of the Ministry of Education and Culture, Japan, and the 27th Grand Prix of the Higashikawa Prize in 2011. Y. Onodera also won the Prix Nièpce in 2006 and the 28th Ihei Kimura Award in 2003.