BriefEncounters
Mikiko Hara’s street photography, captured without
the use of a viewfinder, is full of fragmented gesturesand stolen glances

Words by Josh Lustig

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There’s a story that Mikiko Hara tells in Small
Myths, her book of previously unpublishedphotographs, about a friend who is parking
a car. Hara is sitting in the passenger seat when
the friend notices a kitten in the road. Insteadof remarking, “Oh, a kitten!” or “How cute!”
her friend seems paralysed: “What am I goingto do?” she asks. Other possible reactionswere skipped. Hara and her friend werejolted straight to an unavoidable, anxietyinducing question.
Hara’s photography exists in a similarly
fraught space. Her images seem as though
they’ve been plucked out of the ether before
they have been allowed to fully form. They havebeen captured as photographs before the eye or
the mind can attach any meaning to them.
Hara has no interest in recording the“decisive moment”. Rather, she seems able to32

‘A lot of my work relies on coincidence, and I feellike if I tried to look for something, it may become
difficult for me to meet the encounters’

capture the “in-between” – the moment before
the moment. Holding her camera – a 1930s
German-made Ikonta – at chest height, shenever uses a viewfinder. It’s as though shedoesn’t want her eye to be too involved. Or atleast to not let it overpower the moment itself.
“A lot of my work relies on coincidence, and I
feel like if I tried to look for something, it may
become difficult for me to meet theencounters,” says Hara, who has talked beforeabout her wish to escape her own
consciousness. Her work is an act ofrelinquishing control; of leaving things tochance and the mechanics of the camera. Withthe final image initially unknown to the maker,
her photographs vibrate with a restless motion,
full of stolen glances and fragmented gestures.
Born in 1967 in Toyama Prefecture, Japan,
Hara focused mostly on cinema when she
FT.COM/MAGAZINE APRIL 8/9 2023

FT.COM/MAGAZINE APRIL 8/9 2023

33‘I value things that are ambiguous rather thansomething that makes a strong statement’34

studied at Keio University in Tokyo. She alsojoined a small theatre troupe. She has likened
the adrenaline rush of performing on stage inthe theatre to stepping on to busy streets tomake photographs.
Despite this, Hara initially had no desire to
pursue an artistic career after graduating,spending two years working in sales for a video
and music company in Nagoya. A return toimage-making came later, at Tokyo Collegeof Photography, where she studied under thetutelage of the renowned photographer
Kiyoshi Suzuki. Here, she learnt the art ofstreet photography and the craft of editing
and sequencing.
The people Hara photographs on the street
often seem distracted, or lost in their own
worlds. They rarely notice her camera, theirattention seemingly drawn to somethingoutside the frame. In Small Myths such scenes
are interspersed with images made inside
Hara’s home. We see her children grow fromFT.COM/MAGAZINE APRIL 8/9 2023

FT.COM/MAGAZINE APRIL 8/9 2023

babies to boys. Cut tulips sit in a vase in a sink,food sizzles in a pan, light trickles in throughpartially opened curtains.
These are small things, the incidentals of
everyday life. But really, they are everything.
“I value things that are … ambiguous, orundefined, rather than something that makes astrong statement,” Hara says. They are thefleeting images that occupy our thoughts as wemove through the world, inside and out.
The book includes images made between
1996 and 2021, spanning her whole career todate. Hara says that her style has hardly
changed in all that time. She isn’t trying toconvey a message, or specific theme, she says.
The camera is simply “a device for capturingsomething that cannot be well understood”.
Something familiar but unexpected.
Josh Lustig is the FT Weekend Magazine deputy
picture editor. “Small Myths” is published by ChoseCommune; chosecommune.com
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