A Spirit of Innovation Resonating Across Time and Place: Murasaki Shikibu and Stieglitz

À l'Aurore Bleutée / The Blueish Daybreak

There is a certain grave I make it a point to visit whenever I am in Berlin. The impetus for discovering its location was a notation in a book by my esteemed professor of photographic history from the University of Paris.

Without the contributions of this individual, I am certain my path as a photographer would never have materialised. Consequently, paying my respects with flowers is a ritual I observe during each sojourn to Berlin. Two years ago, I visited the grave alone, and last year, I was accompanied by my daughter. The identity of this person is a somewhat protracted narrative, one I intend to unfold in the latter part of this essay, which commences forthwith.

Last year, my daughter and I were devoted viewers of the historical drama Hikaru Kimi e, centred on Murasaki Shikibu. Despite its prime-time slot on NHK at eight in the evening, the series featured numerous rather intense nocturnal scenes, prompting my nine-year-old daughter to conceal her face and playfully peek through her hands with a mixture of embarrassment and curiosity. (Laughs.)

The protagonist, Murasaki Shikibu, is widely regarded as the author of the world’s first full-length novel. In other words, she was the originator of the very concept of the “extended novel,” a form that had not existed prior. At a time when “kanshi,” Chinese writing, held sway as the official language of the imperial court, Murasaki Shikibu deliberately chose to employ “kana” script, a writing system primarily used by women and associated with colloquial speech and informal settings.

By utilising the practical “kana,” which had evolved as a vernacular script, she succeeded in liberating narrative from the dominance of Sino-centric literature and elevating it to the realm of artistic creation. This pivotal shift also broadened the readership significantly, as it allowed not only men but also women to engage with these compelling stories. A parallel phenomenon can be observed in the annals of photographic history. There exists a body of work that propelled photography into the realm of fine art, independent of what was then considered the established art form: painting. This transformative oeuvre is Alfred Stieglitz’s (1864–1946) The Terminal (1893), a depiction of a winter scene in New York.

At the time, the 8x10-inch large-format camera was considered the orthodox instrument for serious photographers. In contrast, Stieglitz employed a 4x5-inch camera, a model then regarded as rudimentary and associated with detective work, to capture the urban landscape of New York. Moreover, he did so not with his own equipment but with a camera borrowed from a friend!

The French critic Roland Barthes (1915–1980) also remarked in his seminal work Camera Lucida: “Of Stieglitz’s oeuvre, the only photograph that captivates me is this most famous one.”

The advent of the practical, portable, small-format camera served as a significant catalyst for photography’s emancipation from the confines of painting. Indeed, it marked a moment when photography was validated as “art without art,” demonstrating its potential as a medium accessible to all.

It is with profound emotion that I now find myself exhibiting my photographic work in Basel, a city that draws art collectors from across the globe. This particular piece, À L’AURORE BLEUTÉE, was conceived during a nadir in my artistic journey. This period was marked by the constraints of raising children in Japan, a nation characterised by its adherence to tradition, which left me with virtually no personal time—and, consequently, an inability to pursue my photography, save for in the fleeting moments of early dawn and late night.

Removed from the vibrant artistic circles of Paris and Tokyo and immersed in the demands of childcare in northern Japan, I experienced a sense of social isolation, a feeling of being adrift from the connections I once cherished. It was within this context that I captured a moment where self-realisation as a mother and the perceived loss of self as an artist became intertwined: two sides of the same coin. This photograph was taken with an entry-model single-lens reflex camera, a model ostensibly designed for a mother’s initial foray into serious photography. That particular early morning, I had ventured out for a walk in my neighbourhood, a mere 500 meters from my home, seeking a sliver of personal time. In hand was the compact SLR I had purchased to document my children’s everyday lives.

The vista of the morning mist that unfolded before me in my familiar surroundings left me speechless. An ineffable emotion compelled me to unconsciously press the shutter. I recall that this ephemeral scene lasted for no more than two minutes, just before the full ascent of the sun. In that instant, the landscape before my eyes became an extension of myself, a profound experience of subject and self-becoming inextricably linked—a veritable unity of object and observer.

The grave I unfailingly visit in Berlin belongs to Dr Hermann W. Vogel, who is credited with having instructed Alfred Stieglitz in photographic techniques during the latter’s studies at the Technical University of Berlin. In 1873, Dr Vogel was the first to publish a method for enhancing the optical sensitivity of collodion using aniline dyes. He is also considered to have produced the first orthochromatic photograph in 1873, an image of a yellow ground with a blue ribbon. Without Dr Vogel’s pioneering work, it is conceivable that photography would never have attained recognition as a legitimate art form.

Thank you, Dr Vogel!

At Alten Zwölf-Apostel-Kirchhof in Berlin-Schöneberg

My work, À L’AURORE BLEUTÉE, finds its physical manifestation on Echizen washi, the paper said to have cradled the nascent form of Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji. In this act, I express my belief that all narratives hold the potential to conjoin the threads of history and what is yet to come.