Sheherezade by Kimiko Yoshida

The series of self-portraits that have been Kimiko Yoshida's signature since 2001 follow a constant conceptual protocol: always the same subject, the same framing, the same lighting, the same principle of monochrome where the photographer's face tends to disappear. Painting, make-up and direct shooting: here no digital retouching, no Photoshop. The same figure is repeated but is not identical to itself: the more it is the same, the more it is different. These are timeless and "abstract" portraits, i.e. devoid of anecdote, narrative and story.

The peculiar fixity of the subject represented, its indifference, as if the image managed to contain within itself its absence of limits, takes up a very old process of infinite temporality on a restricted surface which dates back to the Flemish primitives.
Kimiko works mostly in Kyoto, where she creates double images by using the traditional technique of lacquer and gold powder applied to her self-portraits printed with pure pigment on canvas. Photography thus opens up to something beyond the limits of photography itself and allows us to glimpse an otherness that goes beyond the very object of representation.