Record of Creation

Noguchi Rika

roshin books

roshin Books announces the publication of Rika Noguchi’s photobook “Record of Creation”. It is the ninth publication in roshin Books’ growing catalogue. Rika Noguchi has been a distinguished photographer even in her student days, and after numerous publications and exhibitions has grown to become an artist representative of contemporary Japanese photography.

Noguchi’s technique of capturing the world with her distinctive, sharp perspective - often compared to “the eyes of a stranger” - leads her to turn everyday sights into views from a different world. The moment fixated in a photograph, the light that flowed into its creation, even gravity’s effect on the depicted world: everything is present in Noguchi’s carefully arranged compositions.

roshin’s photobook “Record of Creation” collects Rika Noguchi’s first three publications, “Rescue”, “An Axis”, and “Record of Creation”, all of which were created during her student days. Even during this early period, her photography clearly demonstrated her rare talent as an artist. She then went on to win one photography award after another and gain international recognition.

For the series “Rescue”, Noguchi photographed rescue training manoeuvres held by firefighters. Themes of rescue and saving are revisited in Noguchi’s contemporary output, drawing a direct connection between this earliest of her published works and her recent series. In the series “An Axis”, Noguchi’s creative vision transform the world into a coordinate system into which people’s existence is arranged. The effect of these images is a sense of an eternal time that cannot be reconstructed again. For the series “Record of Creation”, Noguchi chose a construction site as the stage. Workers are present in each of the 6x6 photographs; the series appears as a collaborative effort between Noguchi and the workers on the construction site. Lastly, the book concludes with two previously unpublished photographs.

roshin Books collected these early works in a beautiful book, created with 1
great care and attention to binding and printing. “Record of Creation” is a masterpiece that will prove indispensable for future discussions about both ; Noguchi and Japanese photobook culture.

Noguchi Rika
Born 1971, Saitama, Japan. Noguchi graduated from the Department of Photography, College of Art at Nihon University in 1994. She began producing photography works while a student at university, and has held numerous exhibitions in museums and galleries both in Japan and overseas. Over the years, Noguchi has also participated in many international contemporary art exhibitions. Since 2017, she lives and works in Okinawa.