Assignment 2

Miwa Yanagi and Feminism

Japanese photographer Miwa Yanagi works in a theatrical aesthetic that expresses fierce feminist perspective narratives. Working with women as her subjects she communicates feminist ideas as well as other ideas “that cannot be openly discussed in Japan” (Mampaso 250). She has many series that deal with this issue, including Elevator Girl, Fairy Tale, My Grandmothers, and Windswept Women are just a few to name. The series Fairy Tale uses black and white images to express a new take on classic fairy tales, recreating Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, and Little Red Riding Hood. The bold perspective she uses to convey a widely known story allows viewers to rethink and interpret the story in a new way. The whimsical feelings of her photographs are offset by the disturbing character of old age and the lack of color in these black and white images. The tales become more like horror stories while her works transport the viewer into a chilling scene of a fairy tale gone wrong. In her Elevator Girl series she employs color. Throughout her work, feminist perspective emerges in her interpretation of the roles women play in the idealist roles women play that are fictive.

Yanagi was born in Kobe City and now live and works in Kyoto; she works with photography and video (Bergquist). In the Fairy Tale series Yanagi represents the fictions of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson with all the characters being portrayed by young girls. Often a character is wears a mask depicting old age. The photographs portray one moment in each story, which seems to imply the moral or lesson of the entirety of the tale and can be identified without the title based on the alignment with each of the fairy tales it represents. According to Janet Koplos, the images “retain the violence of the Grimm originals; yet are rendered with a casual artifice. Little Red Riding Hood, for instance, is a bloody mess as she clings to her grandmother in the literally unzipped belly of the wolf.” Fiercely feminist Yanagi analyzes the roles women play. She has continued to address women's roles since then with a series on imagined ideal grandmothers, and now with her more recent black-and-white "Fairy Tales" series (Koplos). Women tend to be idealized in these tales, so that is what she is showing in the photographs by presenting their roles in slightly new ways. Another series Yanagi creates about the roles women fill is My Grandmothers. The subjects are young girls who portray what they think their life will be like in fifty years. It is easier for them to imagine their life in fifty years than to express their personal present wishes, because they should be pleasing everyone around them and suppressing their own wishes inside (Mampaso 250). She also likes to depict “independent women that take care of themselves” (Mampaso 250).

The Elevator Girl series emerged her reputation of being a feminist. She “captures the uniformity of female submission in her series on the theme of the Elevator Girls who welcome visitors to department stores and invites them to buy” (Martinez 174). Based on Yanagi’s own fear of being stuck in a repetitive task for most of her life, simply because she is a woman, she stated, “When I started the series, I was working as a teacher after graduating from university. Back then, I strongly felt that I was just playing a role in a standardized society, having a particular occupation in a particular setting. I did not work as an elevator girl literally, but the idea resonated in me in a symbolic way” (Wakasa).

The series Elevator Girl communicates the loss of identity and feeling of disregard for individuality. In many of the photographs, the women are all dressed the same. For example, in the image Before and After a Dream, all of the women shown are wearing the exact same outfit. The white top, red skirt, and brown hat trick the viewer to think there is a set of mirrors at work. Actually this is not the case, and the subjects are all dressed the exact same way and even look extremely similar. There is no direct eye contact and the faces of the women are cast down or away from the camera. This could suggest that women are not confident in their actions and should always be unnoticed. This same idea comes through the image Elevator Girl House 1F. The women are lined up as if they are mannequins decorating a hallway. The viewer cannot tell them apart, and it communicates that women are on display and have no purpose other than to beautifully blend in to the background. She shows the pain of the women who are stuck in the repetitive tasks. Viewers cannot see any individual face clearly and individually, the subjects are perfectly expressionless. The images are usually dark or have some subjects more in the dark than others, and they aren’t doing anything meaningful.

Miwa Yanagi employs photography as a way to illustrate feminism and the roles of women in society. In her series Fairy Tale, she twists the roles of the characters in unexpected ways. These works cause the viewer to questions all that they knew before about the stories. The dark and mysterious portrayal is strengthen by the power of age. Her works in Elevator Girl remind viewers of the monotonous and repetitive tasks of women’s lives. It is a personal fear that can be understood and shared with many observers, both male and female. My Grandmother allows young girls to question their lives in the future. The roles they expect to fill and the ones they would like to fill are shown. It is both a reflection of what is expected of them and the acknowledgement that they have more of an imagination of the way things could be. Miwa Yanagi’s work is fantastic in illustrating the roles of women and the obstacles they face, while at the same time portraying them in strong ways.