As if capturing the “in-between” — the moment just before—, Mikiko Hara seizes the present through photography, before the eye and mind. She observes and tells stories as fragments of life, where coincidence often seems to make an appearance.

Mikiko Hara has her own way of secretly capturing the strangers who cross her path: a young man on the train, a couple holding hands, a little girl playing in a park… Sometimes their eyes meet briefly as she presses the shutter, but Mikiko Hara does not exchange with her subjects. Yet, these portraits reveal something infinitely personal, as if the photographer and her subjects were bound by an invisible pact: being in the right place at the right time.

Mikiko Hara’s approach, firmly rooted in a documentation of everyday life, extends in the intimacy of her living space: cut flowers in the sink, a strawberry shortcake in the fridge, her three sons dozing on the floor. The eye of the photographer, who is also a mother and wife, moves back and forth from the outside to the inside, from the public to the private sphere. Wherever she is, Mikiko Hara observes and tells stories like fragments of life.

At the initiative of the publisher – who made the selection in collaboration with the artist – these unpublished photographs from 1996 to 2021 have been assembled in this book, entitled Small Myths.

Biography

Mikiko Hara (born in 1967) studied at the Tokyo College of Photography and was awarded the prestigious Kimura Ihei Award in 2017. Mikiko Hara uses an Ikonta camera without a viewfinder, “The camera lens is more honest, simpler, more unruffled and unforgiving than my own eyes” she explains.