Rinko Kawauchi is an internationally renowned Japanese photographer who lives and works in Tokyo. She graduated from Seian University of Art and Design in 1993. In 2001, Kawauchi simultaneously published her first three books, Hanako (a girl’s name), Utatane (siesta) and Hanabi (fireworks). Since then, she has been enormously productive, with seventeen monographs to date and numerous solo exhibitions at venues including the Photographers’ Gallery and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Kawauchi has won numerous accolades including an Honorary Fellowship at The Royal Photographic Society in 2012 and the 29th Higashikawa Award, Domestic Photographer in 2013. In 2017 she was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet award.

These photographs are from the series 'Illuminance', which was nominated for the Deutsche Börse prize in 2012. In this series, Kawauchi continues with many of the themes and techniques that informed her earlier work, such as her focus on ordinary subjects and everyday situations. Her use of cropping and offhand composition as well as the subtle use of natural light evoke a dreamlike, poetical element in her photographs. Her focus in 'Illuminance' is on depicting the fundamental cycles of life within a personal interpretation, as well as exploring the seemingly inadvertent patterns that can be found in the natural world.