The Story of S - Tokyo Rumando

Catalogue of her exhibition at Museum Folkwang in Germany held from February 6 to March 22, 2020.

Tokyo Rumando (*1980) takes on a range of roles in her series The Story of S. In an act of female empowerment, she performs as a photographer, author, make-up artist, and model all at the same time, on both sides of the camera. Taking up the radical visual language of Japanese photography of the 1960s and 1970s, the artist develops a playful, contemporary game of desire and shifting identities. Tokyo Rumando is regarded as one of the most experimental young female artists in Japanese photography, and her work can now be explored in a solo exhibition for the first time in Europe.

The photographs of The Story of S show the artist at the moment of transformation. Leaving behind the frantic hustle of the streets of Tokyo and the nocturnal allure of neon signs and billboards, Tokyo Rumando withdraws into the seclusion of her apartment and begins an intense game of role-play. Confident and conscious of the viewer’s gaze, she appears before the camera naked or dressed, disguised with a mask or make-up. In terms of motifs, some of the high-contrast, jet-black photographs are reminiscent of works by Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, for whom she also posed a few years ago.

first edition

stock number: NB278