Eriko Koga Exhibition | Asakusa Zenzai

images courtesy EMON PHOTO GALLERY and artist
click to enlarge

In 2003, when Eriko Koga was 22, she met an old couple at the Asakusa Sanja Festival and spent the following 6 years documenting their lives together, creating a testament to their very existence. The body of work was exhibited in parts, first in 2004, then in 2008. But Koga didn’t end her relationship with the couple. She continued her visits to their old gritty home where the couple spent their last years together, serving as a witness to their relationship and to their end.

The little vicissitudes of life are unflinchingly portrayed, and remind me of something the art critic John Berger once said:

Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A photograph is a result of the photographer’s decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.

Asakusa Zenzai will be published as a photobook in December and the body of work will be on display at EMON PHOTO GALLERY in Tokyo starting January (see below for details).