Sake + Karei + Haihīru (Salmon, flatfish, and high heel), 1987

Kon Michiko (born in Kamakura, Japan, 1955) first gained recognition in the 1980s for her unique black­-and­-white natures mortes. After graduating with a degree in woodblock printing from the Sokei Academy of Fine Art and Design, she studied at the Tokyo Photographic School from 1978 to 1980, where she learned printing techniques and started making photographs; her first solo exhibition, Still Life, was held in 1985. She has always been drawn to the oneiric mise­-en­-scène, as demonstrated by her earliest work: a portrait of a man who wears a mask­-like headdress of fish; a riverlike pillow swimming with silver fish. Kon became known for, and continues to make, such images that strikingly reimagine everyday objects—a hat, a dress, a brassiere—using organic elements such as fish, vegetables, flowers, or insects. The imaginary constructions are both mundane and dreamlike, introducing elements of sensuality into the everyday. Kon initially made surreal works, inspired by the fantasy novelists and Marquis de Sade translators Shibusawa Tatsuhiko and Tanemura Suehiro, whose works introduced her to the “charm of seeing something you shouldn’t see.” She soon realized, however, that it would be more meaningful to “take photos of the unrealistic world that actually exists” and began experimenting with prints of photo composites. To this day, Kon makes her pictures at home using natural light. She buys fish and other sea creatures that have been caught in the morning, cuts them up, uses them to make objects, and finishes photographing these assemblages by the time the sun goes down. The prints she makes are lush black­-and­-white images known for their shimmering quality, achieved through a process of printing on metallic paper. Wild and baroque, her tableaux speak to both life and death.