This exhibition presents works from Mika Ninagawa’s photo book PLANT A TREE, published in 2011. The book (a limited edition of 700, numbered) is designed and edited by Satoshi Machiguchi, who also designed Ninagawa’s noir (2010), and is known for 40＋1 PHOTOGRAPHERS PIN-UP (1995), which covers 40 photographers of his generation. Ninagawa usually gets involved in the editing process, but for the first time she left everything to Machiguchi.

In the series Ninagawa photographed cherry blossoms bloomed along Meguro river for only 3 hours one day in 2010. She captured flower petals falling, floating, and drifting away on the dark surface of the river. It gives a feeling of looking at them through tears, and wrings the viewer’s heart with the sense of fragility and conflict.

Artist Biography:
Mika Ninagawa is born in Tokyo. She graduated from Graphic Design department of Tama Art University in 1997. She lives and works in Tokyo. Ninagawa has won numerous awards, including the Grand Prize at the "7th Photography Hitotsuboten" in 1996, the Excellence Award at "The 13th Canon New Cosmos of Photography" in 1996, "The 9th Konica Photo Encouragement Award" in 1998, and the 26th Kimura Ihei Award in 2001. In addition to her career in magazine and advertising photography, she has published richly varied books of photography and directed a film SAKURAN in 2007. She is one of the most active and successful photographers at work today. She received acclaims worldwide for her photo book Mika Ninagawa (Rizzoli N.Y., 2010). She is holding a solo exhibition Mika Ninagawa at Urasoe Art Museum, Okinawa, Japan from February 24 to April 8. Her second film Helter Skelter (written by Kyoto Okazaki / stars Erika Sawajiri) will be released on July 14. This is her 5th exhibition with Tomio Koyama Gallery following the joint exhibition with Daido Moriyama in 2011 in Kyoto.