Aperture Releases Ishiuchi Miyako: Traces

New York, June 16, 2026—Since beginning her career in the 1970s, Ishiuchi Miyako (born in Kiryū, Japan, 1947) has become one of Japan’s foremost photographers, leading the way for female practitioners in a scene that has traditionally been male-dominated. Her work is featured in the volume I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now (Aperture, 2024) and the related exhibition, which is currently on view in London, and will also be presented at the International Center of Photography in New York in October. Ishiuchi Miyako: Traces publishes on June 16 and is the photographer’s most comprehensive English-language survey.

Through subjects as diverse as old apartment blocks, human scars, kimono fabrics, personal belongings of the deceased, and even her own water-damaged prints, Ishiuchi manifests the invisible, capturing time, atmosphere, and memory in photographic form. Her work is at once deeply personal and evocative of the wider world hinted at by the traces recorded within the frame.

Ishiuchi Miyako: Traces charts the course of her practice over fifty years and identifies themes that resurface throughout her work, including her relationship with place, the passage of time, and the bodies and possessions of people, always with an emphasis on materiality and ephemerality. Three thematic sections—Town, Skin & Scars and Things Left Behind—include series such as Yokosuka Story, which documents her hometown, abutting a U.S. military base, in the shadow of what she describes as “liquor, girls, and soldiers, sex, and war”; 1 · 9 · 4 · 7, in which she photographed the hands and feet of fifty women born in the same year as her; Frida, which catalogues the possessions of the artist Frida Kahlo; and a sobering series of clothing and objects held in the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The artist’s major photographic series appear alongside lesser-known works and previously unpublished material. With extracts from Ishiuchi’s own writings, an in-depth interview by curator Lena Fritsch, and a newly commissioned essay by Ishiuchi herself, the artist’s voice is present throughout the book.

The Aperture edition of the book is made possible with generous support from James & Melissa O’Shaughnessy and Dana Lightsey & Peter Harris. Ishiuchi Miyako: Traces is published by Aperture and available at aperture.org.

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Ishiuchi Miyako (born in Kiryū, Japan, 1947) is a Japanese photographer based in Gunma Prefecture. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Hasselblad Award (2014) and the Kimura Ihei Memorial Photographic Award (1978). She represented Japan in the 2005 Venice Biennale with the solo exhibition Mother’s 2000–2005: Traces of the Future, a series of color photographs documenting personal belongings of her deceased mother. Her work is included in collections worldwide, including those of the Albertina, Vienna; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; and Tate, London. Her work is featured in the Aperture touring exhibition and publication I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now, which debuted to critical and popular acclaim at the Rencontres d’Arles (2024) and will be on view at the Photographers’ Gallery, London, from June 24 through September 27, 2026, and at Shibuya Hikarie, Tokyo, from July through August 2026, followed by other upcoming presentations.

Lena Fritsch is a specialist in contemporary Japanese art and photography. Most recently the inaugural Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, she was previously a curator at Tate Modern, London, and Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Her publications include Ravens & Red Lipstick: Japanese Photography since 1945 and a monograph on Morimura Yasumasa.

Yasufumi Nakamori is a curator and writer on global modern and contemporary art. Most recently Director at the Asia Society Museum, New York, he previously served as Senior Curator of International Art (Photography) at Tate in London. His publications include monographs of Ishimoto Yasuhiro, Hatakeyama Naoya and Hosoe Eikoh.

Yuri Mitsuda is an art critic, professor, and the Director of the Tama Art University Art Archives Center, Tokyo.

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About Aperture
Aperture is a nonprofit publisher that leads conversations around photography worldwide. From its base in New York, Aperture connects global audiences and supports artists through its acclaimed quarterly magazine, books, exhibitions, digital platforms, public programs, limited-edition prints, and awards. Established in 1952 to advance “creative thinking, significantly expressed in words and photographs,” Aperture champions photography’s vital role in nurturing curiosity and encouraging a more just, tolerant society.

Aperture’s programs and operations are made possible by the generosity of our board of trustees, our members, and other individuals, and with major support from Bobby Campbell Charitable Fund, Coach, David Dechman and Michel Mercure, Susan and Thomas Dunn, FotoFocus, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Celso M. Gonzalez-Falla, William Talbot Hillman Foundation, Joy of Giving Something, Anne Levy Charitable Trust, Mailman Foundation, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, James McKinney, Richard and Ronay Menschel, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Robert Motherwell and Renate Ponsold, Neuberger Berman, New York City Council, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Ms. Eliot Nolen of the Mary P. Oenslager Foundation Fund, Yesim and Dusty Philip, Theodore and Mary Jo Shen, Diane Sherman, Michael W. Sonnenfeldt/MUUS Collection, Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović, Jane Smith Turner Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Wyeth Foundation for American Art.

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Press Contacts:
Lauren Van Natten, Aperture, publicity@aperture.org